Election integrity activists across Michigan are deeply concerned. Your Senate and House Democrats’ Blitzkrieg of Prop 2 bills — and bills put forth under cover of Prop 2 — threatens to alter the fabric of our election system. Democrat strategists are directing you to rush these bills through in hopes of blowing past any debate in what appears to this election integrity activist to be a thinly-veiled plan to facilitate election fraud in this state. Of course, you won’t be committing fraud, but your legislation will greatly increase its likelihood and extent.
Is that a fair characterization? Not absent a review of what’s in the bills and how they might be expected to harm election integrity in Michigan. So, let’s test the hypothesis that you are, whether knowingly or not, facilitating election fraud in the state of Michigan.
Democrat House and Senate election bill analysis
- Hypothetically, If the Democrats sought to facilitate fraud, they might write, sponsor and gavel through bills that, at every phase of the election process, made things easier for organized vote fraud perpetrators. Is that why your 8 bills voted on last week and 4 more in the on-deck circle do just that? If these are all signed into law, it will make Michigan even more vulnerable to existing systemic election corruption.
- If the Democrats sought to facilitate fraud, they might extend even beyond their authority under the Michigan Constitution to weaken the State’s election laws. Is that why you took legislative license, far over-extending the breach Prop 2 made in our election security guardrails?
- If the Democrats sought to facilitate fraud, they might stretch out the voting process from a single Election Day, making it impossible to staff the polls with enough challengers, who, unlike poll workers, are unpaid volunteers. Is that why your bills permit from 9 to 29 days (clerk’s choice) of “early voting,” turning Election Day into “Election Month”?
- If the Democrats sought to facilitate fraud, they might funnel as many voters to the voting method most susceptible to fraud: voting by mail. Is that why your HB 4699 created a single application for voters to automatically receive absent voter ballots for all future elections, as long as they live, unless they submit a signed request to rescind it or stop voting for 6 straight years?
- If the Democrats sought to facilitate fraud, they might make it easier for organized vote fraudsters to bring Third-World-style ballot stuffing to America. Is that why you sponsored SB 0372, which not only mandates the placement of drop boxes in every community, it will remove the existing video monitoring requirement and change it to clerks “may” video monitor drop boxes? And could that be why you removed the requirement that clerks count and log the number of ballots arriving from those drop boxes each day, making it impossible for challengers to spot suspicious spikes in drop box usage?
- If the Democrats sought to facilitate fraud, they might remove current mandates that require posting the total number of AV ballots received in the election by the close of polls. This law (violated by Detroit on November 8th, 2022), when followed, prevents “extra” ballots from being quietly added to the totals in the early morning hours after the polls close. Is that why SB 0372 also removes the current requirement that clerks post the total number of AV ballots returned in the election before 9 pm on Election Day?
- If the Democrats sought to facilitate fraud, they might allow the use of insecure methods to transmit ballots from military and non-military Americans overseas. Is that why your HB 4210 would allow not only uninformed but any qualified overseas voter to email (that’s not a misprint) their voted ballot to their Michigan clerk? The bill explicitly requires a disclaimer be signed by the overseas voter accepting that “the secrecy of the absent voter ballot may be compromised during the duplication process.” Maybe this disclaimer is required because the co-chair of Michigan’s Cybersecurity Advisory Committee, U of M Prof. J. Alex Haldeman, testified last week that “HB4210 would seriously undermine the security of MI elections”.
- If the Democrats sought to facilitate fraud, they might reduce the number of challengers watching each AV ballot counting board, making it harder for them to identify fraud or other violations of election law. is that why your Senate Bill 0387 reduces the number of challengers permitted to oversee election workers to a ratio of one challenger per 6-8 election inspectors? This will make it impossible to have one challenger per counting board table per political party, as in the past. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who, per Democrat Sen. Jeremy Moss, assisted in the drafting of these bills, is still appealing her loss in court that blocks her attempt to make challengers subject to the whims of election inspectors (instead of unfettered observers of their work).
- If the Democrats sought to facilitate fraud, they might try to counter the challengers’ victory in court (under appeal) to permit the use of video/audio recording inside a counting board by cynically changing the law. Is that why you’re SB 0387 slips an added clause into the oath challengers must take: “…I shall not photograph or audio or video record within the counting place…”?
- If the Democrats sought to facilitate fraud, they might want to reduce nosey challengers’ rights any way they could. Is this why your SB 0387 struck from the law the challengers’ rights protected under 168.730-168.734 during the crucial ballot pre-processing period? [The pre-processing was itself an outrageous security lapse passed last October (the Ann Bollin Law) that allows ballot envelopes to be slit open and remain vulnerable to potential tampering two nights in a row right before the election. Challengers’ rights should apply during ALL phases of the election process]
- If the Democrats sought to facilitate fraud, they might pass legislation to threaten challengers with prosecution for merely doing their jobs, making them less likely to volunteer in future elections. Is that why your HB 4129 would make it a felony if you do or say something that frightens an election worker or makes the worker perceive (in the worker’s own mind) that he or she is being harassed, thus placing an innocent challenger at the mercy of an overly sensitive (or malicious) election inspector?
- If the Democrats sought to facilitate fraud, they might remove the challenged ballot requirement for voters who don’t show ID. Is that why HB 4567 does exactly that? So even if the clerk’s staff identifies a suspected ineligible voter, his or her vote will still be counted. Good luck to canvassers seeking to delete those votes when at least one jurisdiction (Detroit, November 2022) refused to follow Michigan Election Law’s challenge procedure of writing the ballot number on the challenged ballot before the stub is removed. This ensures that the ballot can never be found and “backed out” of the vote count if the voter later proves to be ineligible. [Added bonus: this will continue to let all those thousands of Detroit ballots that don’t show up in the poll books (as in 2020 and 2022) go effectively unchallenged].
- If the Democrats sought to facilitate fraud, they might restrict signature verification to inside the clerk’s office only — where they don’t permit challengers — and prohibit any further signature evaluations by other workers, such as at the AVCB (where challengers are present). Is that why SB0387 explicitly prohibits any additional signature verification of AV ballots by election inspectors at counting boards or precincts?
- If the Democrats sought to facilitate fraud, they might relax the ID requirements where possible. Is that why SB 373 relaxes the photo ID requirement to include IDs from ANY “educational institution”?
- If the Democrats sought to facilitate fraud, they might pass provisions that centralize the counting of votes. Is that why you made no limit to the number of precincts present at an AV counting board location, paving the way for more townships and cities to send their ballots to large counting boards and away from the local citizen volunteers counting the votes? Is that also why you increased the number of active registered voters in a single election precinct from 2,999 to 5,000 active registered voters?
- If the Democrats sought to facilitate fraud, they might make auditing election results more difficult. Is that why your SB 0387 would require tabulators to accept ballots from any precinct in the jurisdiction? Of course, jumbling up ballots from multiple different precincts makes the paper trail that much harder to follow.
- If the Democrats sought to facilitate fraud, they might keep incarcerated people on the voter rolls. Is that why you’ve introduced SB0033, which would do just that, enabling perpetrators of organized fraud to keep the voter rolls brimming with ineligible voters whose voting identities can be stolen via utilization of their names on illegal ballots, which can then be placed in drop boxes, no questions asked. [Maybe that’s why our SOS used taxpayer dollars to fight in court against a non-profit trying to remove 27,000 confirmed dead people from our QVF voter roll?]
- If the Democrats sought to facilitate fraud, they might keep the ballot harvesting laws in place (preventing other people from collecting and delivering your ballot). This, is in spite of all the rhetoric about the need to make it “easier to vote,” setting up unsuspecting Republicans – many of whom have been told Prop 2 made ballot harvesting legal — for selective prosecution. Is that why, despite all the rhetoric about making it easier to vote – the prime pretext for most of the above bills — none of them are designed to legalize ballot harvesting? (Interesting!)
- If the Democrats sought to facilitate fraud, they would fear exposure of these bills to public debate. Is that why you rammed them through, presenting the bills only 24 hours before their committee meetings with no chance of public review, debate or feedback from election integrity groups?
Lastly, if the Democrats sought to facilitate fraud, they would fear those legislators of either party, who might attempt to organize opposition to their bills. Is that why you reportedly limited the time allotted for some committee members to view substitute bills to as little as 75 minutes before the meetings? As I read through and analyzed your election bills from the House and Senate, they made me ill. It’s that sick feeling one gets when one realizes there are individuals in high positions of power who have a free hand to do great harm to your state, your nation, and your freedoms. The greatest threat to the survival of our children and grandchildren is systemic election corruption, which this legislation will codify into law.
To Democrat members: your actions provide clarity. More of us than ever before now know, beyond a reasonable doubt, that you are following a coordinated, systematic plan to weaken our election security, which is itself a matter of state and national security. To members of the Republican Caucus: you should be reminded that some of you have over the years – and even this year — broken ranks to vote with the Democrats. At this crucial juncture, just voting “NO” is not enough. You are expected to speak out forcefully against this assault on our election laws, being remorselessly advanced by your Democrat colleagues.
To the citizens of Michigan: it’s past time we, the people of Michigan, raised up a ragged coalition of downhearted, disillusioned, and disengaged Republicans, impartial Independents, and honest Democrats who all share one thing in common: they expect and demand honest elections. We invite voters from these disparate groups to become informed and engaged so that together we can remedy the rampant, systemic election corruption that is moving our state and nation rapidly toward ruin.
Sincerely,
Philip O’Halloran, MD Chairman
Election Integrity Committee Michigan Republican Party [email protected]
via patriottruthnews