Tag Archives: Michigan Secretary of State

The Stealing Begins

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There are a lot of ways to steal an election–you can do it electronically, you can do it with mail-in ballots, you can do it with basic voter fraud, or you can be subtle and do it by going in to places that you know will vote the way you want them to and paying people to register those voters and get them to the polls. Right now, that is the preferred method.

On Saturday, The Federalist reported:

With a little over seven months until Election Day, “Bidenbucks” are ramping up where Team Biden’s sweeping taxpayer-funded get-out-the-vote order is most needed. Meanwhile, a federal judge has stopped a Bidenbucks complaint described as “the MOST important election integrity lawsuit in the country.”

The Michigan Department of State recently announced a signed Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the U.S. Small Business Administration “to promote civic engagement and voter registration in Michigan.” The agreement, according to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and SBA Administrator Isabel Casillas Guzman is a “first-of-its-kind collaboration” for the federal agency. It is expected to run through Jan. 1, 2036. That is, if legal challenges can’t stop the apparently unconstitutional “understanding.” 

“Small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy. Like voting, they play a direct role in improving people’s lives,” the swing state’s leftist secretary of state, who fancies herself as a defender of democracy, said in a press release. “I’m proud we are working with the Small Business Administration for this first-in-the-nation effort connecting Michigan’s small business community with the tools and information they need to play an even greater active role in our democracy.” 

First of all, we are a representative republic–not a democracy.

The article concludes:

“…Plaintiffs have alleged only an institutional injury resulting from ‘a general loss of legislative power,’” the judge wrote in her decision. “A vague, generalized allegation that elections, generally, will be undermined, is not the type of case or controversy that this court may rule on under Article III.” 

But there’s nothing vague or generalized about the effects of Biden’s voter registration executive order that serves as a federal government-funded GOTV campaign for Democrats. 

As the lawsuit notes, the executive fiat requires all federal agencies to “identify and partner with specified partisan third party organizations,” “distribute voter registration and vote-by-mail ballot application forms,” “assist applicants in completing voter registration and vote-by-mail ballot application forms,” and “solicit third-party organizations.” It also “directs state officials to provide voter registration services on agency premises.” 

All of it is being done without congressional approval or appropriation. Meanwhile, the Biden administration refuses to release records on the initiative, raising the question: What does Team Biden have to hide? 

There will be more of this activity as November approaches.

 

Too Little Too Late

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The Epoch Times reported the following today:

A Michigan judge ruled last week that Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s last October guidance relating to ballot signature verification was not in compliance with the law and thus it’s invalid.

Michigan Republican Party and Allegan County clerk Robert Genetski filed the lawsuit on Nov. 2, 2020, against Benson and Jonathan Brater, director of the Michigan Bureau of Elections.

The plaintiffs claimed that the guidance Benson issued last October violated the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) and should be nullified. They also asked the court to declare that they have the right to request an audit of their choosing, saying the state-wide audit in November did not review whether signatures were properly evaluated.

On Oct. 6, 2020, Benson issued guidance titled “Absent Voter Ballot Processing: Signature Verification and Voter Notification Standards.”

The guidance stated that clerks “must perform their signature verification duties with the presumption that the voter’s application or envelope signature is his or her genuine signature.”

The guidance also said signatures “should be considered questionable” only if they differ “in multiple, significant and obvious respects from the signature on file,” according to the court order (pdf). “Whenever possible,” election officials were to resolve “slight dissimilarities” in favor of finding that the signature was valid.

This is too little too late. The Secretary of State did not have the authority to change the law–that is the job of the legislature. Unfortunately, there were similar events in numerous states leading up to the 2020 election. I don’t believe there is anything we can do to change the results of the 2020 election, regardless of how valid or invalid those results were, but we need to make sure that in the future all of the states follow their own laws.

Exactly Why Is The Law There?

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Yesterday the Washington Post reported that Representative John Conyers would be on the election ballot in Michigan. Representative Conyers was originally taken off the ballot by election officials because he had failed to secure enough valid petition signatures. Some of the people who collected signatures were not registered voters, something that is required by Michigan law.

The article reports:

U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Leitman issued an injunction ordering Conyers back on the ballot just hours after state elections officials upheld an earlier ruling that had kept him off for failing to secure enough valid petition signatures. At issue was the question of whether a law requiring signature gatherers to be registered voters is constitutional.

Leitman said he was not issuing an opinion on that question Friday. But because the plaintiffs challenging the law “have shown a substantial likelihood of success” and “because time is of the essence,” he said he opted to order that Conyers be put back on the ballot.

Leitman’s order came the same day the Michigan secretary of state‘s office upheld a decision handed down May 13 by Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett. Garrett’s office said Conyers submitted far fewer than the 1,000 valid signatures required to appear on the ballot. Leitman’s decision puts him beyond the threshold.

There is a problem with the logic here–there is a law in place that governs the collection of signatures. If voters or state legislators are unhappy with that law, they need to change it. This is an example of a judge saying he didn’t want that law to apply, so he overruled it. Would the judge have made the same decision for another candidate? Do voting laws apply equally to all candidates? According to the U.S. Constiution and most of the state constitutions, laws are made by legislative bodies–not by judges.

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