MI Lawmakers Simplify Process for Election Fraud

Last week, Michigan passed legislation obstructing the process of recounting votes in the event of suspected election fraud this November. Senate Bills 603 and 604 would, if enacted, thwart the ability to recount votes through several means, chiefly by requiring any fraud allegations to be referred to the county prosecutor (i.e. Democrat district attorneys), rather than conducting a recount through bipartisan boards. 

Republican state senators are sounding the alarm on the threat this poses to the integrity of their state’s elections. The pair of bills, passed in conjunction with one another, invite voter fraud by making investigating the fraud nearly impossible.

Each county in Michigan has a board of canvassers that reports to the Board of State Canvassers. Each board is bipartisan with two Democrats and two Republicans. Under current Michigan law, these boards have the authority to investigate fraud with respect to voting. But these Democrat-pushed bills completely strip that away. Not only do they double the fees for a candidate to request a recount, but they also change the definition of what constitutes investigation at all. 

“Under current law, recounts of votes can be done based on the allegation of fraud or a mistake. The legislation removes fraud as a reason for a recount,” a statement released last week from Michigan House Republicans reads. “It also states that recount petitions may only allege an error and must state that there would have been a different outcome in the election without that error.”

These bills not only remove potential fraud as a cause for recount but also specify that recount petitions may only be brought if they would have changed the election results. 

According to Michigan Fair Elections Chair Patrice Johnson, this provision in Section 861(a) was delicately constructed to chill and intimidate the questioning of election results, as doing so would result in an arduous, expensive legal matter. Regardless of legitimate errors involved, one needs to be able to prove outright that it would have upended an entire election. This directly prevents the counties’ ability to investigate election interference as a whole. 

Another section states that any and all genuine suspicions of fraud must be worded as suspicions of “error, rather than fraud or mistake …”

“Section 862 guts candidates’ right to question fraud. It ties their hands to requesting recounts, limited to cases in which the number of votes could overturn the results,” Johnson said in an interview. “It quashes free speech in the use of the word fraud. Suspicions of fraud must be worded as suspicions of errors. Shades of George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.”

Accordingly, Michigan Republicans are voicing serious concern. 

“Passing a law crippling checks and balances of our election system only further deepens public distrust,” Republican Michigan Rep. Greg Markkanen, who voted against the bill, reportedly said in a news release. “The world is full of bad people who may do bad things, including defraud our elections. Our system must be robust and equipped with all the tools necessary to uncover and investigate all discrepancies.”

Michigan GOP Sen. Ruth Johnson, who serves on the Senate Elections Committee and also as the former Michigan secretary of state, has come out strongly against the bills. 

“Right now, Michigan has 104.5% of our state’s voting-age population registered to vote. No photo ID is required to vote. We have no system to tell if someone votes in multiple states and the current secretary of state failed to remove 170,000 names from the voting rolls of people who no longer lived in the state until after she was sued,” said Sen. Johnson in a press release.  “If we want people to have faith in the electoral process, we should not be taking away people’s rights to have allegations of election fraud investigated during a recount.”

We’ve Seen This Before

The Michigan GOP has good reason to be on high alert regarding election laws in their state after the last presidential cycle. In 2020, Michigan conducted one of the worst elections ever seen in American history. The epicenter of the chaos was Detroit, the state’s largest city. 

President Trump ended the evening with a comfortable lead in the state. However, thousands and thousands of ballots materialized overnight, and Trump’s advantage withered away under these massive vote dumps as Biden took the lead. At the TCF Center, the Detroit site where the votes were being counted, poll watchers were reportedly barred from entering the arena, affidavits alleging misconduct were plentiful, and the overall sense was that something rotten had occurred.

Such concerning behavior will only worsen in 2024 if these Senate measures are allowed to put an unprecedented amount of power in the hands of the Democrat district attorney of Detroit.

Mounting Election Interference Efforts in Michigan

This November, both the Biden and Trump campaigns’ success hinges on winning the swing state of Michigan to reach 270 electoral votes. Despite Trump’s drastically increasing popularity in the Great Lake state, the power of left-wing, George Soros-linked district attorneys — in a state whose governor is one of the most prominent activists campaigning for Biden — cannot be overstated. 

What’s more, this legislation comes on the heels of the Michigan attorney general’s indictment of 16 so-called “false electors,” who exercised their due diligence modeled in multiple elections throughout U.S. history — including by Democrats in both the election of 1876 and 1960 — to prepare for the possible event of Joe Biden’s win in the state being overturned. This preposterous prosecution, now followed by Senate Bills 603 and 604, is more evidence that Michigan Democrats seek to chill Republicans’ freedom to speak out against suspicious election administration.

These bills tie the hands of voters and candidates. They aren’t attempts to streamline an election because none of these maneuvers makes the election simpler. They are yet another tactic employed by the left in its war against our Republic.

Allison Schuster is a contributor and former intern for The Federalist as well as a proud 2021 graduate of Hillsdale College. Follow her on Twitter @allisonshoestor.