LANSING, Mich. — State Sen. Ed McBroom on Thursday voted against reporting out of committee a series of “voting rights” bills that would put enormous new legal and workload burdens on local units of government and local clerks.
“This so-called ‘State Voting Rights Act’ legislation purports to protect voting rights, but our right to vote is already well protected by the Michigan Constitution. Passing more laws is redundant and just creates confusion,” said McBroom, R-Waucedah Township. “What these completely unnecessary bills would actually do is create new headaches for local clerks by substantially increasing reporting requirements and their overall elections-related workload while costing taxpayers millions of dollars.
“Our local clerks are the backbone of our democracy. They are not given enough credit for the countless hours they put in on a regular basis to ensure the people have a voice. This package ignored them. Local clerks didn’t ask for these bills, and they don’t need them.”
Senate Bills 401-404 would put new mandates on local units of government and local clerks and would expose the clerks and local governments to new lawsuits. The bills also would create a huge new “database” bureaucracy housed at one of Michigan’s universities that would essentially exist to help people sue local units of government and clerks for something as simple as a poll location change. This database is also going to be a huge tool for politicians and the parties to use for targeting voters and funds to help their respective sides in elections.
“Election security matters and stopping voter suppression matters, and we have good laws doing both,” McBroom said. “These bills are bad policy not just because they are costly and unnecessary, but because they are harmful to our election process and our neighbors who serve as clerks and poll workers. Local clerks who diligently follow the law should not have to constantly worry about lawsuits if someone objects to how to best to effectively and fairly run an election in their community.”
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