You’ve probably heard about the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (or SAVE) Act, now awaiting congressional action. The Michigan ballot proposal Americans for Citizen Voting has drawn much less attention.
The organizers of the Americans for Citizen Voting petition drive announced earlier this month that they had submitted 750,000 signatures to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s office. The campaign needs 446,198 valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. If it qualifies, Michigan voters this fall will decide whether to enact it into law.
If voters OK the measure, it would kick off a bureaucratic fiasco that would require every Michigan voter to re-register before casting another ballot.
Our elections are safe
The 2020 election was not stolen. The 2024 election was not stolen, either. Because in Michigan and all states, both elections were honest. But President Donald Trump refuses to believe it.
And now, he and the GOP have a bigger problem, a problem that could end their control of Congress this November. Trump and his policies are unpopular, and growing more so by the minute.
So Trump, aided by many Republicans, is driven to reduce the number of eligible voters, end voting by mail, and end the use of voting machines (yes, you read that correctly). He’s also called for finishing all vote counting by midnight on Election Day (good luck with that).
None of that is likely to happen. But changes to voter registration laws could prevent millions from casting ballots, and those threats are real.
What would the SAVE Act and the Michigan ballot initiative do?
Both require prospective voters to show verifiable proof of U.S. citizenship. That may sound good, but implementing either proposal risks cutting off millions of voters who lack access to the needed proofs; plus, each ignores current constitutional requirements.
The proposed Michigan constitutional amendment requires that “every individual listed in the (state’s) Qualified Voter File is a United States citizen,” and directs the state to “continually administer a citizenship verification program.” It provides several ways to fulfill that goal, but the point is every voter’s citizenship has to be verified.
There are some 8 million registered voters in Michigan. Should the Americans for Citizen Voting proposal become part of Michigan’s Constitution, every voter will have to be certified as a U.S. citizen before the next election. There are school board votes in May 2027, roughly six months after November 2026. How many voters could be certified by then?
The amendment requires the state use every device from federal, state and local records to establish citizenship. OK, I was born in Ohio, how long will it take to get my birth certificate from the busy workers in Butler County? I have a passport, fewer than half of Americans do, how long will that take to verify that? Married women who have a different name than their birth certificate shows will also have to submit documentation of a name change, like a marriage license. Plus, how much will the state have to spend, how many folks will have to be hired, to certify me and the other 8 million or so Michigan voters, before any of us can vote?
These changes are unnecessary
Michigan’s Constitution already stipulates one must be a U.S. citizen to vote. Plus, when registering to vote you sign a legal document, and if you lie on that registration form you are guilty of perjury – that’s a felony. A local clerk I have communicated with assured me the felony threat alone stops most unqualified people from registering.
What exactly are we saving with these efforts at electoral malice? With ample proof of effectively zero electoral threat from corruption, we will save nothing and cost all of us far, far too much.
Free Press contributing columnist John Lindstrom has covered Michigan politics for 50 years. He retired as publisher of Gongwer, a Lansing news service, in 2019. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters, and we may publish it online and in print.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: SAVE Act threatens voting rights. Michigan proposal is worse. | Opinion
Reporting by John Lindstrom, Contributing columnist / Detroit Free Press
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