LANSING, Mich. (Legal Newsline) - A spokesman for a statewide petition drive to enact voter integrity reforms, including voter ID, says supporters are “hitting back” after a complaint was filed earlier this month with the Secretary of State against a group opposed to the reforms.
“The timing was great for us,” Jamie Roe of Secure MI Vote told Legal Newsline. “We just sent a mailer out and we saw a big uptick with hits on our website after the complaint was filed.”
The complaint was filed by Dustin Wefel, a paid petition circulator, against Protect MI Vote, a group created when Secure MI Vote began its drive for election reform last October.
Attorney for Wefel, Troy Cumings, chair of Warner Norcross and Judd’s Government Affairs Group, said that Protect MI Vote paid a consulting firm, Groundgame Political Solutions, to pay petition circulators not to work on any voting initiatives, effectively shutting out Secure MI Vote.
“He [Wefel] contracted for $50,000 with Groundgame on the condition that he not circulate any voting petition,” Cumings told Legal Newsline. “They found one Secure MI Vote petition with him and the lawyers were all over him. That’s when he started to do some research and found out who was behind the effort.”
Cumings said that the consulting firm reported the spending but not what the spending was for – a violation of state law.
Secure MI Vote began its petition drive after Gov. Gretchen Witmer, a Democrat, vetoed a series of voter integrity measures passed by the Republican controlled legislature, including voter ID.
The voting reform initiative would require everyone to produce a form of ID at the ballot box, prohibit the Secretary of State from mass mailing absentee ballot applications, require ID for voting absentee, and prohibit state and local election officials from accepting private funds to underwrite election management. It would also provide funding for the printing of ID cards, which would be free for those with no other valid ID.
The voting measures can become law without Whitmer’s signature under a provision in the Michigan Constitution that permits citizen-driven legislative initiatives. Secure MI Vote needs 340,000 signatures on its three page petition by June 1.
Secure MI Vote's Jamie Roe said that they are shooting for 500,000 to be on the safe side but will probably miss that mark and fall in the 450,000 range.
If the Board of State Canvassers verifies the signatures – a process Roe predicts will take at least six weeks – then the voting integrity measures go before the legislature for a simple up or down vote. The governor cannot veto the measures.
The new laws won’t be in place for the November elections, but will be in place for the 2023 municipal elections and the 2024 general elections, when the presidency is decided.
Bridge Michigan reports that as of the end of March, Secure MI Vote had received nearly all of its $1.2 million in funding from Michigan Guardians of Democracy.
Protect MI Vote received nearly all of its $2.5 million from the Sixteen Thirty Fund. The Fund, according to the Capital Research Center, is a leftist group that “carpet-bombed the 2020 election with dark money.”