The Fight to Stop Anti-Voter Trojan Horses

Guest Opinion

I wasn’t always someone who advocates for voting rights. In fact, I spent years as an eligible voter… not voting. It took until I was 25 for me to recognize that voting is an important way I can help improve my community and the lives of the people I love.

It’s been exciting in recent years to see the progress Michigan has made in improving access to the ballot box and protecting our democracy. But now that hard-fought progress that Michiganders overwhelmingly approved of is under threat.

Documentary proof of citizenship requirements are the new anti-voter trend sweeping the nation and the state. It’s been said before and it bears repeating: These policies are non-solutions in search of a problem. Our elected officials have a responsibility to stand up for our voting freedoms and oppose these requirements that will roll back our constitutionally protected rights.

House Joint Resolution B (HJRB), the SAVE Act, and similar efforts to require Michigan voters to provide additional documentation when registering to vote or updating their voting registration are Trojan horses, designed to look appealing on the surface while concealing something dangerous inside.

It is already the law that only eligible voters can vote in our elections.

Once we look inside these Trojan-horse policies, we find the truth: They are nothing more than voter suppression efforts part of a long history of trying to prevent certain people from accessing the ballot box.

Other states that have passed similar policies to HJRB and the SAVE Act in the past saw tens of thousands of eligible Americans deprived of their constitutionally protected right to vote. According to Canton Township Clerk Michael Siegrist, “If you enjoy inefficiency and bureaucracy, while also failing to meet your goal of a more secure election, these proposals are perfect for you.”

The idea that—as we face rising living costs, the climate crisis, the undermining of our basic rights and freedoms, a catastrophic wealth-gap, and a potentially 2008-level economic crisis (or worse)—we are spending our “one wild and precious life” focusing on this pile of conspiracy-driven nonsense makes me want to bang my head against my desk.

It is absolutely clear that these new policies will disenfranchise eligible voters. They aren’t specific about what documents will be required, but most likely voters will need to provide a passport or birth certificate.

Nearly 6 million Michiganders don’t have a passport and especially for communities of color, student voters, and rural communities, getting fast access to a birth certificate is no easy feat. Not to mention married women who changed their last names and will have to jump through still more hoops to gain access to the ballot box.

“But the public is worried about the integrity of our elections,” supporters cry. “We must do something!” To which I reply, “Are you worried about the purple elephant standing behind you? No? Let me tell you these conspiracy theories about how purple elephants are coming to take everything and everyone you ever cared about away from you. Worried now?”

Some lawmakers, officials, and grifters are laser-focused on driving attention toward problems that are simply not real.

These ill-informed, unproductive, conspiracy-driven attacks on our voting rights are designed to divide us and make us fight about yet another made-up problem, and of course they’ve added a thick undercurrent of xenophobia and racism to their attacks.

Instead of working to lower costs, protect the rights of their constituents, and ensure our communities can breathe clean air and drink clean water, elected officials are working to strip tens of thousands of Michigan voters their right to vote by adding unnecessary and burdensome red tape to a constitutionally protected freedom.

Our leaders should work on behalf of Michiganders, not work to silence our voices and take away our rights.

If lawmakers are truly worried about election integrity, they should focus on protecting the right of every eligible Michigan voter to cast a ballot and ensure local clerks have adequate resources to run our elections.

Go to MichiganVoting.org to learn how our elections work and call your lawmaker to tell them you oppose these voter suppression efforts.

Erin Lodes has more than a decade of communications experience. She got her start in this work as a campaign organizer and has been with Engage Michigan doing research and communications since 2020.

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