Commentary: Big Tent Ideas

SNEAD: The Left Has Launched A Surprise Attack Targeting Voting Rules In One Battleground State

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There’s a surprise attack underway in the swing state of Michigan where a left-wing group, Promote the Vote, got a Democratic wish list of voting rules and procedures added to this November’s ballot as a constitutional amendment.

With Michigan having a Democratic governor and a Republican state legislature, there’s been a standoff on election integrity reforms, and this is a way around the Republican legislature.

Proposal 2 is a repeat of the Democratic playbook from the 2020 election which is to weaken voter ID laws, expand mail in ballot programs, increase drop boxes and allow outside groups to spend money on election systems. After the 2020 election, at least 24 states have reformed their election laws, but Michigan has been in a standoff with a split government.

Proposal 2 is a giant step backwards for the state’s voting laws and will make the voting procedures more vulnerable to manipulation from outside groups and election administrators.

Take voter ID, for instance. Promote the Vote says its measure ensures “identity verification” with photo ID, yet it allows voters to “verify” their identity by merely signing an affidavit. A whopping 84% of Americans — including 72% of black voters and 90% of Hispanic voters — think voters should have to show a photo ID. But for the activists behind Promote the Vote, asking for so much as a utility bill goes too far.

That is just the beginning. The measure nudges Michigan towards a California-style all-mail system by creating a permanent mail voting list. Once on it, voters are automatically sent ballots for every election in perpetuity. At least 68% of voters oppose that, and with good reason.

Ballots inevitably get sent to people who have moved or died, wasting resources and creating opportunities for fraud. And the proposal floods the state with over 500 drop boxes, all of them accessible 24 hours a day for 40 days without any requirement to staff or monitor them.

Proposal 2 also encourages election related lawsuits which will give partisan operatives like Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias fresh opportunities to saturate Michigan courts with lawsuits to give Democrats political advantage. Elias alone has multiple attorneys and an unlimited pot of left-wing money to draw on.

He has filed more than 60 lawsuits this year to undermine election integrity laws and force states to accept congressional redistricting maps gerrymandered to favor Democrats. Other groups like the ACLU and League of Women Voters have filed still more. The right is fighting back but with a much smaller army.

Proposal 2 also creates a new constitutional right for billionaires and wealthy special interests to influence elections by pouring private money directly into government election offices. The 2020 election showed how corrosive private election funding can be.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg singlehandedly gave more than $350 million to two liberal groups, which in turn distributed these “Zuckbucks” disproportionately to left-leaning jurisdictions. In Pennsylvania, for example, counties that voted for Joe Biden received an average of $2.85 per capita, while counties that Donald Trump won got a paltry 60 cents per capita.

Half the country — 24 states in all — have banned or restricted private funding of elections. Why would Michigan voters want out-of-state billionaires to influence and buy their votes and voting system?

Promote the Vote has relied heavily on out-of-state liberal organizations and donors to fund its ballot initiative. Groups such as the Sixteen Thirty Fund have provided nearly $5 million to add the proposed amendment to the Michigan ballot. Dubbed “the indisputable heavyweight of Democratic dark money,” by The Atlantic magazine, the Sixteen Thirty Fund falls under the umbrella of the left-wing Arabella Advisors network, established to finance left-wing priorities across the country.

The same special interests pushing Michigan’s amendment spent millions to remake elections in Arizona with a similar ballot measure. Fortunately, Arizona’s Supreme Court ruled that the Arizona Democracy Resource Center Action, a group also funded by the Sixteen Thirty Fund, failed to gather enough valid signatures to include the initiative on the ballot this fall. But in Michigan, the state Supreme Court rejected a similar legal challenge, teeing up a vote this fall.

The real objective of Proposal 2 is to lock loose voting laws into the Constitution so that lawmakers cannot pass popular reforms that take the slack out of elections. One such proposal is Secure MI Vote, which would enact a true photo ID law and ban Zuckbucks. But lawmakers will be powerless to adopt those policies if Proposal 2 prevails.

Michigan is on the front lines of the fight for election integrity.

Jason Snead is the Executive Director of Honest Elections Project Action.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.