EDITOR:

Recently, Republican efforts to severely restrict voter access to the polls in Michigan have run into a major problem: voter fraud.

Tens of thousands of signatures collected on petitions supporting the “Securing MI voting” referendum were collected by the same group as those found by the Michigan Office of Elections and Council of Canvassers on petitions submitted by five Republican gubernatorial candidates to be fraudulent, leading organizers to “Secure MI Vote,” miss the deadlines for submitting petitions. Consequently, the Secretary of State’s office indicated that the “Securing MI voting” the initiative will not appear on the November ballot.

Proponents of the cleverly named but misleading initiative claimed it would protect our elections from widespread voter fraud. What it would actually do is restrict access to polling stations.

Since the 2020 election, when Donald Trump lost Michigan by more than 150,000 votes, Republicans in the Legislature have passed dozens of bills aimed at restricting voter access to the polls. Their supposed objective was to protect our elections against “widespread electoral fraud“. However, no evidence of such systemic fraud exists – in Michigan or anywhere else.

Governor Whitmer quickly vetoed these anti-election measures.

In 2018, millions of Michigan citizens voted to expand our access to the polls, making exercising our constitutional right to vote easier and safer.

Our elections are overseen and conducted under the aegis of our Secretary of State’s office and by experienced local election officials and election officials, including clerks from Michigan’s 83 counties, each of whom is sworn to abide by election laws.

As we noted earlier, it’s not the voters who cheat, it’s the politicians. In this egregious case, politicians cheated, submitting thousands of petitions with falsified election information – acts of fraud.

Our elections are safe and secure. There is no need for partisan interference.

If someone has to resort to fraud to get their name or their initiatives on the ballot, then they have no place here. Except the so-called “Securing MI voting” the ballot initiative due to petition fraud is a major victory for all Michigan voters, as it upholds the provisions of the referendum passed in 2018 by a wide margin that granted greater access to the ballot box through measures such as expanded access and use of mail-in ballots, simplified voter registration, same-day voting by provisional ballot, etc.

Dan Young

Escanaba