LANSING, Mich. — The Democratic majority in the Michigan Senate this week passed sweeping election reforms that remove fraud, mistakes and ballot tampering, among other things, as reasons to request a recount of election results.
“Once again, the Democrat Party is doing one thing while saying another when it comes to the security and integrity of our elections,” said Sen. Jonathan Lindsey, R-Allen. “I challenge one person in the current majority, or anyone who supports these bills, to explain how prohibiting fraud from being investigated by election officials or removing fraud as a legitimate reason for a recount improves confidence in our elections or strengthens their integrity.”
Senate Bills 603 and 604 would prohibit local officials from investigating potential fraud, illegal activity, or even ballot tampering during a recount by deleting current provisions in Michigan election law that give this authority to the bipartisan county boards of canvassers. The bills also remove references to the word “fraud” in the statute altogether.
“We have a significant increase in mail-in ballots; people don’t need photo identification to vote; our secretary of state has violated the law and repeatedly failed to do her job, including failing to remove 170,000 people from the voting rolls until she was forced to do so; we lack a system to determine if someone votes in multiple states; 102.8% of our state’s voting-age population is registered to vote, and now, we’re prohibiting local election officials from investigating fraud.
“There are a number of other concerns we should be addressing instead of jamming through these partisan bills. Removing these basic safeguards will most certainly further erode the public’s trust — and once the public’s trust crumbles, our system of government will be shortly behind.”
Lindsey said these bills push Michigan election laws to the extreme opposite end of the spectrum that we as a state should be on.
“These checks and balances exist in our system for a reason,” Lindsey said. “If we want people to have faith in the electoral process, we should not be taking away the right to have allegations of election fraud investigated during a recount. Faith in our elections is at an all-time low, and this senseless reform does nothing but deal another major blow to people’s confidence.”
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