LANSING – It was a quick day in the Senate for one of the first bills the chamber introduced this year to eliminate straight-ticket voting, as it cleared a Senate committee Tuesday morning and the full chamber by the evening.
The bill, SB 13, would eliminate the ability for voters to vote for all the candidates of one party by a single selection.
The full Senate would later include additional language to place a $1 million appropriation in the bill from the General Fund to the Department of State to assess the impact of eliminating straight-ticket voting, assist in ongoing compliance and fraud prevention in elections and conduct thorough post-election audits of selected precincts after each election.
The appropriation could also be used to provide remedial follow-up with local election officials to correct any election errors or compliance issues, as well as audit file maintenance by local election officials and provide equipment to facilitate the integrity of the election process.
The inclusion of the appropriation also makes the bill referendum-proof, which Senate Democrats repeatedly pointed out.
Sen. Curtis Hertel Jr. (D-East Lansing) tried to win an amendment to remove the appropriation but it was defeated largely along party lines. Republican Sen. Patrick Colbeck of Canton Township and Sen. Tory Rocca of Sterling Heights joined all Democrats in support of the amendment, though.
“We all know why it’s here. Let’s not lie to each other, and let’s not lie to the voters of this state. This appropriation is a $1 million insurance policy against the will of the people,” Hertel said in promoting his amendment on the Senate floor. “The only reason to add the appropriation to this bill is to go around the voters and make it referendum-proof. You are afraid of the people you represent, and you should be. The people are tired of this partisan ridiculousness in this chamber.”
Sen. Dave Robertson (R-Grand Blanc), chair of the Senate Elections and Government Reform Committee that had earlier in the day reported the bill 4-1, with Senate Minority Floor Leader Morris Hood III (D-Detroit) in opposition, urged a vote against the amendment, saying he believed the purposes for which the appropriation is included “are entirely legitimate.”
Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof (R-West Olive), speaking to reporters after session, said he supported Robertson’s assertion and noted that Michigan is one of only a handful of states that still has straight-ticket voting.
“There’s more and more people that are identifying as independents, so they don’t vote straight ticket or straight party, and I think it’s an opportunity … that people have to look at and study candidates and issues and have to make their selections,” Meekhof said.
Though Senate Democrats attempted the inclusion of numerous amendments that would tie-bar the bill to such things as absentee voting for first-time voters, no-reason absentee voting, electronic registration for voting, and more, all proposed amendments failed.
“You’re serving your own self-interest by making it harder to vote,” Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich (D-Flint) said as his no-vote explanation. “We could be making it easier to vote, but we’re not. We could be restoring peoples’ faith that we work for them, but we’re not. If we want our election system to be as bad as our roads, go ahead, pass this bill. But don’t expect to get a pat on the back from your constituents, because families know that we’re not fixing any problems. They think we’re just making things worse, and sadly, they are right.”
The bill cleared the chamber 23-13, with Rocca and Sen. Joe Hune (R-Whitmore Lake) joining Democrats in opposition to the bill. Sen. Mike Nofs (R-Battle Creek) and Sen. Tom Casperson (R-Escanaba) were absent from session at the time of voting.
Asked if the appropriation would be enough to serve all the purposes that were listed, Meekhof said there is always an opportunity to do more, but clerks said “this is what they could start with, and the education part is first before the voting process,” he said.
But Chris Swope, the Lansing City Clerk who also was representing the Michigan Association of Municipal Clerks, seemed less interested in an appropriation during his testimony to the Senate committee and more concerned about sorting out the confusion voters will have over the change and the all but likely increased wait times voters will experience at the polls having to go through the whole ballot.
“Even if it takes an individual 30 seconds, if you have a line of voters, that adds up,” Swope said, quoting an estimation by the bill sponsor, Sen. Marty Knollenberg (R-Troy) on the extra time that may be needed per voter as a result of the change.
Instead, Swope said, the Legislature should be doing everything it can to make voting easier.
“(Voting) is a privilege and a right,” he said. “The ability to vote straight party is good for the voters.”
He said this could also cause a problem for illiterate voters, many of whom look at the vignette to understand who they’re voting for.
But Eric Doster, a Republican attorney supporting the bill, said he was not sure it would add extra time in all instances. He said he had been through his fair share of recounts, and one of the problems that would come up is when a person votes straight-ticket but then still fills out boxes that might otherwise be contradictory to that choice. And some people check the straight-ticket box but go through the whole ballot anyway, voting for one single party.
And that’s why, according to Knollenberg, his bill does not eliminate straight-ticket voting; it eliminates the checkbox at the top of the ballot, he said.
“People can still vote for all Democrats or all Republicans when a straight-ticket voting checkbox isn’t available,” Knollenberg said, noting that 40 states have eliminated straight ticket voting, West Virginia being the most recent.
But Hood was not buying that argument.
“What you’re asking for in this legislation, I can do right now,” he said. “You’re asking for an individual to go in and check each and every one of the candidates down the list. What you’re actually doing is taking options away from the voters.”
Michigan Democratic Party Chair Brandon Dillon also slammed the Senate’s passage of the bill.
“This is yet another way for Republicans to restrict the ability of voters to vote the way they want. The people of Michigan already decided this issue in 2002, when over 60 percent of voters elected to keep straight-ticket voting as an option on our state’s ballots,” Dillon said. “Whether you’re a Democrat, Republican, or an independent, straight-ticket voting is used by voters of all stripes, for many reasons, none of which require explanation to GOP lawmakers. We should be doing whatever we can to make voting easier for people, not taking away options to make it harder.”
And Lonnie Scott, executive director of Progress Michigan, alleged the bill was a direct response to voters rejecting Republican candidates for statewide education board elections. One surprise from the 2014 elections was that while Republicans swept most state races, Democrats still won most of the education board races.
“Senate Republicans proved that they are afraid to face the voters of Michigan and instead are continuing to use their legislative majority to rig the rules in their favor,” he said in a statement. “This bill does nothing to advance democracy in Michigan. Instead, it only confirms that Michigan Republicans are not interested in a debate about their failed policies. Suppressing the vote is the act of political cowards, which at this point is typical of what we have seen from the Michigan GOP.”
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