Grassroots Republican conservatives have called for an “all hands on deck” approach to fight this proposal.  They have instituted the “Manhattan Project,” named after the American led effort in World War II to develop an atomic weapon so as to prevail against the Axis enemies. 

The real intent and danger of Proposal 2 has been in full view from the get-go for those who have read the fine print of this initiative.  But for those people who have not, the deceptive marketing and promotion of this proposal has confused them and is leading them to approve of something they ordinarily would not have.  Polls are showing a 70% approval rate for this proposal.

What are the items in this proposal that are dangerous to election security?

1. No absolute requirement for photo ID

Proposal 2 is being promoted by Democrats as “the right to vote with photo ID.”  Most Americans support the requirement for photo ID in elections.  It is already the law in Michigan that you must vote with photo ID, but if you don’t have one, you can sign an affidavit to simply declare you are who you say you are!  This, in effect, cancels out the requirement for a photo  ID and renders it meaningless.  The ballot is tabulated anyway.  No one checks the affidavits after the fact and if they did, there is no way to tie the voter back to their ballot which will have been counted. 

So, why put this item in this proposal if it is already the law in Michigan? 

Because under this proposal, this fake “vote with photo ID requirement” would be embedded into the state constitution.  Furthermore, it is designed to get the votes of Republicans and independents who just see the daily “your right to vote with photo ID” TV and digital ads and assume it is a Republican, conservative sort of proposal to endorse.

2. The legalization of third-party, non-government funding of elections

In 2020, Mark Zuckerberg flooded the nation's cities and counties with more than $400 million for the obvious purpose of influencing the outcome of the election.  About $20 million of that funding came to Michigan with 90% of it targeted for deep blue, urban areas.  The grant money came with clawback provisions, meaning that recipients needed to follow the directives of those granting the money or they had to give it back.

After the 2020 election, 24 states banned or restricted the acceptance of private money flowing into elections.  The Michigan legislature also voted on a bipartisan basis to ban it, but Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer vetoed the bill.

Do Americans really want billionaires to blatantly influence the outcome of our elections?

3. Absentee ballots would automatically be mass mailed in perpetuity to voters

Currently, Michigan voters can choose to be on a permanent absentee ballot application list.  They can then choose to fill out the application and send it in for a ballot to be mailed to them.  Under Proposal 2, once they are on the permanent list actual absentee ballots would permanently be sent to them.  But these voters may not be interested in voting or they may have moved or died.  Millions of absentee ballots would be circulating in the state which would make ballot-harvesting and ballot-trafficking so much easier.  It would also incentivize keeping inaccurate voter rolls and not cleaning them up.

4. Expansion of the number of unmanned drop boxes to over 2000!

 Michigan Citizens for Election Integrity (MC4EI.com) was the team which investigated and analyzed over 1,600 hours of drop box surveillance videos from the Detroit 2020 general election.  They witnessed hundreds of hours of multiple ballot drops to drop boxes suggesting ballot trafficking.  They also observed multiple people taking pictures of their ballots as they deposited them and often in surreptitious manners from the sleeve of their jackets or palms of their hands held down to evade camera surveillance.  This would suggest a payment validation scheme for ballot trafficking as was observed elsewhere in the nation.  Election officials collected ballots into garbage bags with no bipartisan oversight into their delivery to the absentee counting boards at the TCF center in Detroit.  Surveillance videos are not the answer to ensure drop box security.  No one watches them in real time, and the recordings can be "lost," illegally discarded, or fail to function.  The Republican-dominated Michigan legislature had access to these videos for over a year and didn’t bother to review them.  Why expand drop boxes when they are such a magnet for ballot traffickers?

5. Only the Secretary of State would be allowed to conduct post-election audits

This would eliminate the right of citizens to seek redress of grievances against election officials when election malfeasance and fraud is being investigated.  If election officials are implicated in wrongdoing, how can they be the ones tasked with investigating themselves?

6. More than 33,000 prison inmates statewide would be given the ability to vote    

  This would permit more Michigan prisoners to vote than the total number of voters that decided the 2016 election in Michigan! The proposal says that no law, rule, regulation, etc can be used to deny an individual’s fundamental right to vote.  Existing laws which exclude prisoners from voting would be abrogated by this constitutional amendment provision. Prisons, like nursing homes, are the kind of environment that vote-traffickers exploit, and don't imagine that some prisoners would not hand their ballots to ballot "brokers" for a price. Do we really want prisoners potentially voting in judicial races against the judges who put them in jail? 

There is even more in Proposal 2 which further erodes election integrity but these are the main items.

Paid “Promote the Vote” petitioners have been observed in red, conservative cities and towns such as Frankenmuth, the famous German tourist mecca.  They had tables set up with American flags from which they spouted their stump speech of “Support Voter ID” or “Support the Military.” (There is a provision in the proposal to accept military ballots if postmarked by election day.)  What red blooded all-American Republican would not vote for that? 

Talk about a massive political bait and switch!  Too many Michigan citizens were not aware of what they were signing when they bought into all the media hype and misinformation regarding this proposal.  They have confused this proposal with the SecureMiVote Petition effort which would have truly endorsed election security.  But this petition was defeated by a liberal-dominated court.

Many Michigan citizens have already voted via absentee ballot in this 40 day period of early voting.  But it is not too late for them to go in person to their township, city clerks and ask to “spoil” their ballot and request a new absentee ballot to vote with.

If the leftist election scammers can pull off Proposal 2 in Michigan, there will be no stopping them in attempting the same in the rest of the nation.

Voters need to be vigilant and always read the fine print before they sign anything!

Rebecca Behrends, M.D. is a retired ED physician and vice president of research for Michigan Citizens for Election Integrity (MC4EI.com).

Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License