Last week, on the eve of the election Governor Whitmer struck a deal with the state legislature to make some changes to their election law. These changes will weaken voter faith in the states electoral system and goes against the principles laid out in the AVA model law.
In four bills they managed to cover the following: Creation of Super Central Polling Places, Pre-processing Before Election Day, No Enforcement Mechanism to Force Clean of Voter Rolls, Further Legalizes Drop Boxes, Loose Party Parity Rules, and Overseas Internet Voting.
Our Legislative Liaison Tim Griffin states an “increase of drop boxes, absentee mail-in ballots, and a continued lack of accountability at the local level is the wrong way to go. Precincts should be small and local, yet this law allows the creation of small precincts to be lumped together into bigger super centralized centers that will make ballots harder to track”. Super centralized centers were seen in multiple states during the 2020 election under the guise of the pandemic and led to thousands of ballots missing chain of custody forms.
Tim also shared that “many new responsibilities are created for the Secretary of State and election clerks, but there is no mechanism to enforce these laws when they aren’t followed. The state doubled-down on giving localities a choice of whether or not to hire poll workers in equivalent numbers of republicans and democrats”. Parity among poll workers brings transparency, accountability and inclusivity into the election process. All principles that we advocate for in elections abroad and what should be applied to ours here as well.
Once again we ask that you take a minute to download a copy of our Model Law, contact your legislator and share with your friends and family. We must pass modern election reform and give legislators a model to follow.
