It’s May in Michigan and Democrats have just “introduced their first pieces of legislation to respond to what they consider overly aggressive Republican proposals to improve election security,” Hayley Harding reports for VoteBeat.
Yes, the problem is those darn Republicans wanting too much election security too fast, doncha know.
“Michigan Democrats’ election proposals sidestep the noncitizen-voting issue for now,” was how the Michigan Advance headlined the article, in which Harding explains that “the package of bills under the Michigan Election Security Act won’t close the voter registration loopholes that may have allowed at least one noncitizen to cast a ballot that counted last year.”
Oops! That one University of Michigan student, Haoxiang Gao, is a Chinese national, who didn’t show up for court; whereabouts currently unknown.
Since that bombshell, another 15 cases have surfaced of noncitizens voting illegally last November. Nonetheless, Harding informs us that “the bills omit the measures Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson suggested in February as a way to prevent noncitizens from casting ballots in Michigan’s elections.”
Back then Benson “didn’t provide details of her proposal,” noted Harding, but mentioned “policies that enable us to track and retrieve” those votes “cast by voters who registered the same day as the election.”
“It could be provisional ballots, it could be additional verification or residency requirements in that moment,” the Secretary of State, now a candidate for governor (whose recent campaign announcement on state government property violated state law) offered reporters.
Sure, her proposal could have been a lot of things.
Now we see, however, that it is nothing.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
One reply on “A Nothing in Michigan”
Horrors! One person?
What about Trump? Still afraid?