Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson vows that a check-off box asking voters to confirm their U.S. citizenship will once again appear on November ballot applications, raising concerns among voting rights advocates who argue it's unnecessary, intimidating and could suppress voting.
Johnson defends her decision to keep the box she ordered in the February and August primary elections as a legal and appropriate extra step to ensure only citizens participate in elections — even after fellow Republican Gov. Rick Snyder recently vetoed a bill that included a requirement for voters to check a similar citizenship box.
Secretary of State Ruth Johnson
MLive Media Group file photo
"Johnson added the citizenship checkbox to ensure that only U.S. citizens participate in Michigan elections," Woodhams said. "It also helps noncitizens who have inadvertently registered to vote by letting them know that it is not proper for them to vote."
Coalition members say state law already requires that people must confirm their citizenship when they register to vote and such box "impedes a free and fair election."
"We should not subject 7.3 million voters to an interrogation — it's a completely idiotic way to solve the problem," said Jan BenDor, statewide coordinator for the affiliated Michigan Election Reform Alliance. "People are just stunned that any party would go after the building block of our democracy."
BenDor said Johnson is misinterpreting the state law, which doesn't specifically deal with content of the applications.
"This does not give her the authority to add more stuff," BenDor said. "We could have two dozen questions on there. How offensive do we need to get?"
The controversy comes as voter identification laws tighten across the country. Michigan is already among 17 states that require or request a photo ID of voters when they cast ballots, though not all of the laws have taken effect, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Both sides in the citizen check-off debate cite examples of how the citizen check-off box eases or enhances confusion at the polls.
A report released by Michigan Election Coalition after the August primary found 38 percent of calls to voter election hotlines were related to the box. Some voters, the coalition said, were required to check the box in order to receive a ballot, while others encountered a challenge.
The secretary of state office said the check-off box has prevented noncitizens from voting and cited the example of a Canadian national living in Livingston County's Genoa Township, who regularly voted during the past decade and didn't know he could not cast a ballot until checking the "no" box in February.
BenDor said she knows another Canadian man living in the state who received a voter identification card in the mail after renewing his driver's license as a result of the longstanding federal voter registration law.
"He could have committed a felony and he didn't know it," she said.
Dave Dulio, chairman of the political science department at Oakland University, said Johnson's actions are "not surprising" given the immigration debate during the last several years. He said her move is similar to one this year by President Barack Obama, who bypassed Congress in June and changed U.S. policy to stop deporting and start granting work permits to younger illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children and have since led law-abiding lives.
"It's a way to impact policy without going through the legislative process," Dulio said. "It's another way that ... politicians can draw contrasts between their side and the other, and it holds true for both parties. It's something that's red meat for the bases of both parties."