LANSING - Michigan House Democrats today challenged a Republican-sponsored package of bills - Senate Bills 751, 754, 803, 823 and 824 - intended to make registering to vote and voting itself more difficult for Michigan voters. State Representatives Barb Byrum (Onondaga), David Nathan (Detroit) and Woodrow Stanley (Flint), the Democratic members of the House Redistricting and Elections Committee, offered numerous amendments to the proposed pieces of legislation. Each bill targets a particular area of election and campaign finance laws. Proposed changes include creating an inactive voter file for voters who do not vote for six consecutive years, requiring photo ID when individuals register to vote, adding new, burdensome requirements for third-party voter registration organizations, and requiring voters to affirmatively state they are U.S. citizens on an application prior to voting. Democrats especially are troubled that Republicans are pushing these bills in a major presidential election year, when maximizing voter turnout is essential to a fair election process.
“Popular, free elections are the bedrock of democracy in America, and any attempt to disenfranchise qualified voters is shameful and must be challenged,” said Byrum, democratic vice-chair of the House Redistricting and Elections Committee. “For House Republicans to waste valuable time in order to find even more ways to block voters from the polls and ballots is profoundly disturbing. This whole package of legislation shows just how out of touch my Republican colleagues are. They’re discouraging eligible voters, instead of including them in the process.”
House Democrats offered a number of amendments to this Republican-backed package of bills. The following are some of their key amendments:
-
Add language requiring that all provisions in this section will be conducted in compliance with federal law (Nathan)
-
Require that the Secretary of State has to develop the training program immediately upon the effective date of the bill and make the trainings available in Lansing and online (Nathan)
-
Allow online voter registration on the Secretary of State’s and clerks’ websites (Stanley)
-
Exempt overseas military voters from being required to check-off the citizenship question (Byrum)
-
Repeal the requirement that an individual’s driver’s license address be the same as his or her address for voting registration purposes (Nathan)
-
Pre-register 16 year and 17 year olds to vote when they go to the Secretary of State to get their driver’s license and auto-registered at 18; allow early voting; allow no-reason absentee voting; allow same-day voter registration (Stanley)
-
Require that “robo” communications clearly state the name and address of the person paying for the communication. (State Representative Lisa Brown, West Bloomfield)
-
Require tough disclosure requirements in campaign finance spending and to prevent state contractors, companies that accept federal bail-out money, and foreign-controlled corporations from spending money in Michigan elections in light of the Citizens United Supreme Court case (State Representative Ellen Cogen Lipton, Huntington Woods)
“This legislation is the most egregious example of using the election reform process to deprive the right to vote to groups such as seniors, minorities, and low-income Michiganders,” said Nathan. “For example, SB 754 requires a person to present a picture ID in order to register to vote and requires unnecessary, unreasonable and burdensome requirements on organizations that are critical in assisting citizens, such as voters in minority communities in taking the first step to complete a voter registration application.”
“These bills represent the Republicans’ hostility towards the full Michigan electorate,” said Stanley. “Making it harder for citizens to vote serves only one purpose. It makes it easier to avoid the full will of the people of Michigan. Republicans fear more voters, because they fear those voters will use their ballots to oppose the Republicans’ recent assaults on middle-class workers, seniors, students and local governments. The Democrats will continue to fight these senseless attacks on voting rights, which generations of Americans gave their lives to protect.”
