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Tag: election law
Meet The GOP Extremists Hoping To Unseat Michigan Gov. Whitmer

Meet The GOP Extremists Hoping To Unseat Michigan Gov. Whitmer

The race to unseat Michigan's Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has already attracted at least a dozen Republican candidates and millions of dollars in campaign spending.

Whitmer became a target of conservative ire, both statewide and nationally, for her lockdown orders, and is one of the most vulnerable incumbent Democrats, according to the Cook Political Report, which considers the Michigan governor's race a toss-up. While her favorability rating was underwater for most of the pandemic, polling from EPIC-MRA released Sunday pegs her at 50 percent favorability despite a negative job performance rating.

In that same poll, Whitmer has opened up a 5-point lead — 45 percent to 41 percent — over Craig after being tied with him for months.

Many of the Republicans aiming to unseat Whitmer have adopted the kind of extremist rhetoric used by former President Donald Trump, both embracing Trump's baseless claims of widespread election fraud in Michigan and calling for the arrest of political and ideological opponents.

At least five of the GOP candidates have said they believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump — including one candidate who was involved in both the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol building and the 2020 storming of the Michigan state Capitol by armed militia members.

While a majority of candidates have not engaged in this kind of "lock her up" rhetoric, a majority of Michigan Republican gubernatorial hopefuls have cast varying degrees of doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

James Craig

Former Detroit Police Chief James Craig, who served from 2013 to 2021, is the frontrunner in the GOP primary race and has already raised $1.4 million. In a July campaign ad announcing his candidacy, Craig touted his police force's crackdown in 2020 on racial justice protesters in a city where 78 percent of residents are Black.

The ad begins, "We know Seattle burned, Portland burned. Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia — burned. Even some cities here in Michigan. But not Detroit."

Detroit police officers have been accused by activists of engaging in disproportionately aggressive responses — using tear gas and rubber bullets against nonviolent crowds, arresting and detaining peaceful protestors, and, in one case, driving an SUV through a crowd of protestors — to what were some of the most peaceful protests in the country that summer.

In 2020, a federal judge temporarily banned the DPD from using shields, gas, rubber bullets, chokeholds, sound cannons, and batons against protesters because of excessive force allegations.

Craig's police department did not use the same harsh crowd-control methods on Trump supporters who tried to illegally enter a Detroit absentee ballot counting center during the aftermath of the 2020 election. Craig said police officers treated the Trump supporters less harshly than Black Lives Matter protesters "because they were peaceful."

Garrett Soldano

Garrett Soldano, a Kalamazoo chiropractor who opposed Whitmer's stay-at-home order in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, has raised $1 million.

Soldano, who played a decisive role in organizing the resistance to Whitmer's lockdown orders and eventually launched the Unlock Michigan campaign that defeated the lockdown orders, said on Twitter that Dr. Anthony Fauci should serve a life sentence.

Soldano and Craig have both called for an audit of the Michigan vote total while not explicitly endorsing the idea that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

Ryan D. Kelley

Ryan Kelley took part in the right-wing insurrection that took place on January 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. While Kelley has claimed he never entered the building, footage emerged on Twitter in July 2021 showing him advancing on the Capitol building.

"Come on, let's go! This is it!" Kelley can be heard shouting in the video. "This is war, baby!"

Kelley had previously downplayed his participation in the insurrection.

"As far as going through any barricades or doing anything like that, I never took part in any forceful anything," he told MLive in March. "Once things started getting crazy, I left."

Kelley co-founded the American Patriot Council, a Michigan militia whose members violated COVID-19 regulations to enter the state capitol in 2020 while armed with rifles.

Last September, Kelley proposed that President Joe Biden should be tried for treason against the United States — a crime for which death is a possible penalty — while speaking at a candidates' forum hosted by the Oceana County Republican Party. And in November, Kelley called for Whitmer's arrest, accusing her of violating the Constitution of the United States.

Along with Kelley, four other candidates — Articia Bomer, Bob Scott, Evan Space, and Ralph Rebandt — have taken up Trump's false claim that Biden only won Michigan because of widespread voter fraud.

Tudor Dixon

Tudor Dixon, a conservative talk show host from Norton Shores, Michigan, has claimed without evidence that "Democrats took advantage of COVID" in a "premeditated" way to win the 2020 election, and accused Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson of conducting the election "in a way that was ripe for fraud."

Despite her numerous claims about the legitimacy of Michigan's 2020 presidential election results — where Biden successfully flipped a state Trump won in 2016 — Dixon has said she honors "the certified results of the election."

The television network Real America's Voice, which hosts Dixon's show "America's Voice Live," also employs Trump's former senior adviser Steve Bannon. Dixon has raised $200,000 in her bid to unseat Whitmer.

Kevin Rinke

Kevin Rinke, a millionaire businessman, has not outright disputed the results of the 2020 election. However, he has alluded to voter fraud conspiracy theories by campaigning on elections that "guarantee integrity."

Who Will Trump Endorse?

Trump has not yet endorsed a candidate in the Michigan governor's race. Last year, Dixon and Craig both traveled to Florida to meet with him.

A Trump endorsement is often a good predictor of victory — at least in Republican primaries. Nearly every Republican candidate Trump endorsed in 2018 and 2020 won their primary contests.

Trump has endorsed two other candidates running for statewide office in Michigan: Kristina Karamo, a part-time adjunct professor at Wayne County Community College who is running for secretary of state, and Matthew DePerno, a Kalamazoo attorney who is running for attorney general.

Both Karamo and DePerno have said they support Trump's claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

Reprinted with permission from the American Independent

Chief Justice John Roberts

Why Chief Justice Roberts May Fail To Protect The 2020 Election

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

As election day approaches, voting-rights lawsuits are heating up across the country. In two separate federal cases in August, 20 states and the District of Columbia sued President Trump and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to reverse cutbacks to the postal system designed to undermine the agency's ability to deliver the expected upsurge in mail-in ballots this fall.

At the same time, the Trump administration has filed federal lawsuits to invalidate vote-by-mail procedures adopted in Pennsylvania, Nevada, and New Jersey. The administration alleges, without any supporting evidence, that easing the rules on mail-in balloting will lead to massive fraud.

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Wisconsin Voter-ID Law Stands As U.S. High Court Rejects Appeal

Wisconsin Voter-ID Law Stands As U.S. High Court Rejects Appeal

By Greg Stohr, Bloomberg News (TNS)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for Wisconsin to implement a voter-identification law that opponents say is one of the strictest in the nation.

Rejecting an appeal by civil rights groups, the justices Monday gave a victory to Republicans, including Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who have championed voter-ID laws around the country. Wisconsin is one of 30 states with ID laws and one of 17 that enacted measures since the Supreme Court upheld an Indiana statute in 2008.

Civil rights groups say ID requirements disproportionately affect minority and low-income voters while doing little if anything to protect against fraud. The organizations pressing the Wisconsin appeal said 300,000 registered voters in that state lack a qualifying ID.

“The right to vote is the foundational element of American democracy,” the groups argued. “Increasingly restrictive voter ID laws like Wisconsin’s Act 23 unjustifiably burden the voting rights of millions of registered voters, particularly African Americans and Latinos.”

Wisconsin officials led by Walker, a potential presidential candidate, defended the law. They argued that it will impose a minimal burden on voters while providing more assurance of a fraud-free election.

“In Wisconsin, as elsewhere, the overwhelming majority of voters already have qualifying ID,” Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel argued. “For those who lack ID, obtaining one and bringing it to the polling place is generally no more of a burden than the process of voting itself.”

In October the Supreme Court blocked the Wisconsin law from applying to the Nov. 4 election. A lower court had revived the law weeks earlier, and civil rights groups told the high court at the time that hasty implementation would mean widespread confusion.

Lower courts have largely backed voter-ID laws. In a notable exception, a federal trial judge said Texas’s statute was the product of intentional discrimination. That case is now before a federal appeals court and could make its way to the Supreme Court before the 2016 election.

Unlike with Wisconsin, the Supreme Court let the Texas law take effect for the 2014 election.

In the latest Wisconsin appeal, groups led by the League of United Latin American Citizens argued that the 2011 state law violated the U.S. constitutional guarantee of equal protection and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Wisconsin’s law lets voters use any of eight forms of identification, including in-state driver’s licenses, state-issued photo IDs for non-drivers and military IDs. The state also accepts some student identification cards, though not those from the University of Wisconsin campuses.

A federal trial judge invalidated the measure, saying it would deter many residents from voting. The judge also said the state hadn’t pointed to any recent instances of voter impersonation in Wisconsin.

A three-judge federal appeals panel in Chicago reversed that decision, pointing to new rules the state issued to help people obtain the documentation they need to get IDs. Officials took that step after the Wisconsin Supreme Court, in a separate case, said people must be able to get IDs without having to pay a fee for documents.

The panel’s ruling drew a rebuke from Judge Richard Posner, who argued unsuccessfully for reconsideration by a larger group of judges. Posner said voter-impersonation fraud was “a mere fig leaf for efforts to disenfranchise voters.”

The Supreme Court in 2008 upheld Indiana’s voter-ID law on a 6-3 vote. Writing the court’s lead opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens said voter fraud was a real risk that “could affect the outcome of a close election.”

Stevens said the record in the Indiana case “does not provide any concrete evidence of the burden imposed on voters who currently lack photo identification.”

The Wisconsin civil rights groups say the trial in their case produced that type of evidence. State officials say the two laws are indistinguishable after the changes required by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Photo: A Mary Burke supporter holds a sign promising to vote during a September, 2014  rally (Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association/Flickr)

Oregon Enacts The Nation’s First Automatic Voter Registration

Oregon Enacts The Nation’s First Automatic Voter Registration

By Maria L. La Ganga, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

SEATTLE — Oregon, which 15 years ago held the first presidential election conducted totally by mail, built on its history as a ballot box innovator when Governor Kate Brown signed a bill this week enacting automatic voter registration for all eligible citizens.

As secretary of State, Brown championed what she called “New Motor Voter,” a first-in-the-nation bill to register all Oregonians to vote when they obtain or renew a driver’s license or state identification card. Those provisional voters will be notified by mail and given 21 days to opt out.

“It was my top priority,” she said Monday as she signed the legislation. “And I am thrilled that I am about to sign this into law as governor. … Virtually every eligible Oregonian will be able to have their voice be heard.”

The secretary of State’s office estimates that the new law will add around 300,000 voters to the rolls; currently about 2.2 million voters are registered in the state, according to the Oregonian newspaper.

Brown said that the new law will modernize how the Department of Motor Vehicles and the secretary of state’s office function.

“During testimony on the bill, a legislator said to me, ‘It’s already so easy to register, why would we make it easier?'” recounted Brown, who was sworn in as governor a month ago, after John Kitzhaber resigned in disgrace. “My answer is that we have the tools to make voter registration more cost-effective, more secure and more convenient for Oregonians.

“Why wouldn’t we?”

Oregon’s push to register as many voters as possible goes back to 1981, when the state Assembly approved voting by mail for local elections, at the discretion of each county. In 1998, voters passed Ballot Measure 60, making Oregon the first state in the country to conduct state elections entirely by mail.

The secretary of State’s website explains why, with a photograph of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his view on the matter:

“Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.”

Photo: Rob Boudon via Flickr