GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — As soon as the State Board of Canvassers unanimously voted to certify the Promote The Vote ballot proposal on Friday September 9, many people in attendance clapped and cheered.
It was finally going to be on the November 8th Election Day ballot after the canvassers were deadlocked for a week on language regarding an additional proposal.
“So, we’re really excited that Promote The Vote 2022 is now Proposal 2,” said Sharon Dolente during a Zoom interview on Wednesday. “We know that the voters in Michigan really support protecting our voting rights and making our elections more secure.”
Dolente, who’s the senior advisor at Promote the Vote, a nonpartisan group, said it’s an amendment that’ll expand voting rights in the state’s constitution.
“Currently the right to vote is not expressly protected in the Michigan Constitution and Proposal 2 would change that,” Dolente said. “So, that just makes sure that voters can vote free of harassment, interference, or intimidation.”
She said Prop 2 also allows for nine days of early in-person voting. It’ll also expand access for military and overseas voters, allowing their ballots to be counted if it’s postmarked by Election Day.
“I would add one more thing, I think another piece that gets a lot of important attention is that it would enshrine our current and effective Voter ID system into our Michigan Constitution,” Dolente said. “So nobody, no courts, again, elected officials can tamper with that in the future.”
However, it’s the voter ID part that has the group Secure MI Vote concerned, said its executive director Jeffrey Litten.
“We want every legal voter to have the right to vote but our issue is that there’s so many other things in this proposal that are going change our Constitution permanently that are hidden,” Litten said during a Zoom interview on Wednesday. “It’s going to make it so No. 1 the Constitution will state that you never have to show an ID to vote ever again.”
Litten said that if IDs are used to purchase alcohol or to enter onto an airplane, then they should be used to vote.
The groups' legislation will not appear on the ballot in November. However, Secure MI Vote's Initiation of Legislation on their website states:
"Initiation of legislation amending the Michigan Election Law, 1954 PA 116, MCL 168.495, 523, 759, 759a, 759b, 761, 761b, 764b, 813, and adding 168.523b, 760a, 946, to: require partial social security number for voter registration; require photo ID for in-person voters; require driver’s license, state-ID, partial social security number or photo ID on absentee ballot application; require voters who don’t provide this ID to present ID in person within 6 days after election to have their vote counted; provide state-funded IDs to applicants with hardships; specify minimum times clerks must accept absentee ballots for in-person or dropbox delivery; prohibit officials from making absentee ballot applications available except upon voter request; prohibit donations to fund elections."
“The second major thing is that any private individual — billionaire, corporate, corporation, special interest — any of them can donate as much money to any private, any clerk in the state whether that’s a city or township clerk, and can expect possibly a quid pro quo situation, whether that is Mark Zuckerberg donating as much money as he wants, or Donald Trump or Betsy DeVos donating as much money as they want,” Litten said. “This is opening up the floodgates to that type of money going into all this situations.”
Promote The Vote states that all funding, including donations from private persons or entities, be publicly disclosed.
He said the group, which was formed in 2021 and is nonpartisan, is also concerned about incarcerated felons getting the chance to vote. He believes they should vote when they’ve been released from prison.
Litten added that they too would like to have a secure election. However, when it comes to Prop 2, he recommended the public read between the lines.
“This proposal, that 100-word proposal is made to look shiny and look nice,” Litten said. “But these are things that are hidden in it, that are going to potentially cause issues and question results and make it so we lose faith in our election system.”
