A ballot question to tighten Michigan’s voter ID and registration laws barely missed its chance to get before voters Monday.
The Michigan Board of State Canvassers refused to certify the proposed constitutional amendment to the November ballot. That’s after several of the petition signatures the campaign turned in were called into question.
Paul Jacob is chair of Americans for Citizen Voting Michigan (ACV), the campaign behind the measure. He said the group plans to fight the board’s decision in court.
“We’re not giving up. You can’t cheat the people of Michigan and get away with it. We’re going to be back, we’re going to go to every court we have to go to. You’re not going to get away with this one,” said Jacob.
Much of Monday’s debate came down to technicalities in board policy.
Out of the roughly 710,000 signatures ACV submitted to meet the 446,198 threshold, elections staff reviewed a thousand-signature sample. Those non-partisan workers processed challenges to that sample from opponents, attempts to save those signatures, and rebuttals to those attempts.
After all the steps, ACV entered Monday’s meeting needing to convince the Board of State Canvassers to accept at least five more signatures that had been rejected. The ones focused on were rejected for having signatures that didn’t match voter file records.
To save those, ACV submitted signed and notarized affidavits from those voters that affirmed it was their name on the petition sheet. But the panel found affidavit signatures also didn’t match the voter file.
In other cases, the board deadlocked on whether to accept affidavits that came in after a 48-hour pre-meeting deadline. Those late affidavits would have made the difference and, if turned in earlier, would have gotten the measure on the ballot.
Jacob said the rejection was disenfranchising.
“Enough people signed this petition for this to be on the ballot. Even they acknowledge it. And yet, somehow in the process, they’re going to take this away, that’s not right, that’s not America, that’s not Michigan,” Jacob told reporters after the meeting.
Board Chair Richard Houskamp, a Republican, wanted to accept them.
“This was voters who had signed petitions, who were coming forward and saying, ‘You invalidated my signature. I’m coming forward to tell you that that really was my signature and that really was me on the petition.’ And so, when it comes to the 48-hour rule, I think that’s different,” Houskamp said.
The board’s two Democratic members disagreed, arguing that it would have been unfair since it blocked other challenges based on the 48-hour rule. The issue ended in deadlock.
The board also discussed concerns with other signatures in the sample, including damaged sheets, mismatched addresses and messy handwriting.
While ACV’s supporters accuse the board of disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of voters, opponents accuse the campaign of failing to follow state policies. Campaigns often argue points of compliance down to the letter when matters come before the Board of State Canvassers.
Micheal Davis Jr. is with the group, Promote the Vote Action. He said there’s some irony in the situation since the measure would take away the option to vote without an I.D. by signing an affidavit of identity.
“As they look to potentially disenfranchise tens and hundreds of thousands of Michiganders and not give them the ability to be able to sign an affidavit and come in to attest to who they are, they’re relying on that to make their point,” Davis said after the meeting.
Americans for Citizen Voting Michigan has vehemently denied that its campaign would take away anyone’s right to vote and maintains that it would only make it harder for people already ineligible to vote from doing so.
With a little over two months to go until the general election, courts will likely have to decide quickly whether to overrule the state canvassing board’s decision. There’s a September 4 deadline for submitting final ballot wording to the Secretary of State.
The board plans to approve ballot question language for the proposal, just in case. That matter was also on the agenda but the board ran out of time.
