Ethics and Elections Update from Reps. Lund and Meltzer

From State Representatives Pete Lund and Kim Meltzer:

While elves are busy stuffing stockings, Democrats are busy drafting bills that could stuff our ballot boxes with fraudulent votes. Many elections bills are promoted as making voting more convenient. While this is a worthwhile goal, it must never come at the expense of the integrity of the voting process.

Let’s review a few problematic proposals:

House Bills 4337 and 4261 (tie-barred) – “Pre-register” teens

With this proposal, teens could “pre-register” to vote starting at age 16. When the pre-registered teen turns 17.5, the local clerk shall send him a voter registration card. On the surface there is an argument to be made that by registering early will encourage teens to vote. What causes concern, however, is the high rate of transience of teens as they move out of parents’ homes where they reside at 16 and into college towns and apartments away from home at 18.

There will be an inevitable lag period while a teen is still on the voter list in mom and dad’s hometown while actually living elsewhere. Chicago used to be infamous for all the dead people whose votes were counted in elections. Do we really want Detroit to become infamous for all the teens whose votes were counted but no longer live here?

House Bills 4359-4540 – E-mail voter registration

We realize that e-mail has become an integral part of our daily communications. HB 4359-4540 attempts to modernize voter registration by allowing e-mail voter registration. However, serious issues remain with the concept of validating e-mail applications. How do we authenticate who is sending the transmission without any initial in-person transaction? On-line scams abound, and no doubt some technologically savvy players may find this opens the door wide open to fraudulent voter registrations.

Fortunately none of these bills have cleared both the House and Senate to date. For those who ask if voter fraud is really a problem, Republican State Senator Michelle McManus notes that she has heard from local clerks who have reported having greater than 100 percent of all eligible residents registered to vote, thanks to nefarious groups such as ACORN.

On a more positive note, there is a bi-partisan bill that gives us Christmas cheer:

House Bill 5279 (H-3) – Military and overseas e-mail ballots

The Pew Center on the States this year named Michigan one of 16 states that don’t allow adequate time for overseas troops to vote. Local clerks report that it can take several weeks or more to process an absentee ballot request, mail the ballot, and receive the ballot back. Often the ballot does not make it back to the clerk until after the polls have closed.

HB 5279 requires that local clerks send ballots via e-mail to overseas and military voters. This will greatly speed up the receipt of ballots, allowing enough time for votes to be completed. In order to ensure the integrity of these votes, Rep. Meltzer added an amendment to require that the ballots be returned by a traditional mail carrier service such as the U.S. Postal Service. This way a signed ballot will still be on record. This bill was signed into law, and we count this as a worthwhile gift to our troops, who deserve to have full participation in our elections they defend the right for us to hold.

Merry Christmas to all of you, and God Bless our troops!

Tagged as: Kim Meltzer, Michigan Elections, Pete Lund, State Government