Pretext should not drive policy.
The good news: A Republican-led state committee in Michigan this week concluded an investigation of the 2020 presidential election in Michigan and found “no evidence of widespread or systemic fraud.”
The bad news: Despite finding no evidence of fraud, GOP legislators in Michigan persist in seeking a package of 39 election law reforms that would, in sum, make it harder for law-abiding Michigan residents to vote.
Predictably, former President Donald Trump immediately lashed out at the GOP state senators who led the investigation.
The committee’s 55-page report, the culmination of an eight-month investigation, stated: “Citizens should be confident the results represent the true results of the ballots cast by the people of Michigan.” President Joe Biden won the November election in Michigan by more than 154,000 votes.
Predictably, former President Donald Trump immediately lashed out at the GOP state senators who led the investigation, urging the people of Michigan to “vote them out of office” and calling the investigation a “cover up.”
The report by the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee debunks a number of 2020 conspiracy theories, such as claims that ballots were cast by dead people and voters who had moved out of state. (They weren’t.) Similarly, the report noted that inspection of paper ballots in a number of jurisdictions rebutted baseless allegations that vote counts were changed by tabulating machines provided by Dominion and other vendors. And — contrary to a claim voiced by Trump — the report found that Detroit did not have more votes cast than it has people. In fact, 250,138 votes were cast in Detroit, about 50 percent of the city’s registered voters and 37 percent of its total population of 670,000. The report goes so far as to recommend that the state attorney general consider “investigating those who have been utilizing misleading and false information” about election fraud in Michigan “to raise money or publicity for their own ends.”
And yet, GOP state legislators are still moving forward with laws motivated, at least in part, by the very falsehoods they just debunked. Among other things, the bills would require voters to include with their absentee ballot application a copy of their driver’s license, a step that could create an obstacle for voters without access to a photocopier, and which could increase a voter’s risk of identity theft. The bills would curtail the use of drop boxes, forcing voters to travel greater distances to a clerk’s office or rely on the U.S. Postal Service, which delayed delivery of ballots in 2020.
The bills would also prohibit the secretary of state from sending unsolicited absentee ballot applications to voters and from posting absentee ballot applications online. And they would prevent clerks from supplying prepaid return postage for absentee ballots. Perhaps a lawsuit filed by the Justice Department on Friday challenging similar laws in Georgia will give pause to legislatures like Michigan’s that are considering laws that would tend to suppress voting rights. Without any evidence of fraud, what possible purpose could these laws serve?







