I don’t like everything about it; I think there’s certainly significant room for improvement. I think that making sure JCAR is part of the process, even though I think the presumption is easily there, would have been one of those. I think we’ve done significant improvement in the last several days by making sure it is a “shall” when it comes to not sending ballots to those who are no longer in the state. I think it’s an important improvement when we talked about camera requirements over ballot boxes. It’s important the other changes we’ve made with sentencing and many of the other provisions of how the drop boxes are assured to be secure.
When it comes to the ID issue, the Constitution specifically says that a person may prove their ID “by (1) presenting their photo identification, including photo identification issued by a federal, state, local, or tribal government or an educational institution.” There it is. We have to accept school IDs. I don’t like it. I think the remarks my colleague made previously are very true, that it would be important to put a more robust set of requirements on the issuance of those IDs, and yet the Constitution says that they must be accepted henceforth.
There’s much of this package I am able to come to support today, especially considering I believe I’ve had a good-faith effort with my colleague, the chairman of the committee, to get many good and appropriate changes put into this bill package. I want to thank him for his cooperation and willingness to listen and encourage serious consideration by my colleagues on a “yes” vote for each bill if they can find a way to get there.
Senator Moss’ statement is as follows:
This bill package is the result of a methodical and deliberative process to implement last year’s voter-adopted Proposal 2. Our bills provide the needed and requested guidance to our 83 county clerks and 1,500 municipal clerks to create the framework of nine days of in-person early voting, allow voters to sign up to permanently receive absentee ballots, afford voters due process to correct ballot submission errors, add permissible options for voter ID, and require ballot drop boxes in each community.
I’m especially proud of our work on early voting that provides Michigan voters with an additional way to access their ballot. This framework was created with input and guidance from election administrators at every level and is worthy of bipartisan support because 60 percent of Michigan voters demanded it in Proposal 2 and about 20 other states—from Texas to New York, Florida to Illinois—utilize it. Our legislation here meets the needs of Michigan’s diverse communities, large and small, by providing clerks flexible choices to make early voting work for them. A community may choose to host its own single municipality early voting site or sites, it may partner with another municipality in a joint early voting site, or it may contract with the county to conduct its early voting. Increasing early access to the ballot through in-person voting, requiring drop boxes, easier absentee signup, and more in Proposal 2 will uplift voting rights in Michigan by giving citizens more options to have a say in their governance. It will also result in the reporting of accurate election results much quicker and instill confidence that our system is efficient and effective.
As a closing, I want to recognize those who put in many exhaustive hours to draft these historic bills that represent a generational change in voting. The bill sponsors in this package, House Elections Committee Chair Tsernoglou, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and the Department of State team, the dedicated clerks representing the Michigan Municipal Clerks Association and Michigan County Clerks Association, my incredible staff—my legislative director, Jennie Gies; our elections policy lead, Jennifer Shuster; and my chief of staff, Sarah Schillio—and of course the Promote the Vote team which pushed for this proposal to protect and strengthen voting rights in Michigan that an overwhelming majority of voters directed us to uphold. I urge a “yes” vote on the package.
The following bill was read a third time:
Senate Bill No. 368, entitled
A bill to amend 1927 PA 175, entitled “The code of criminal procedure,” by amending section 11d of chapter XVII (MCL 777.11d), as amended by 2018 PA 661.
The question being on the passage of the bill,
The bill was passed, a majority of the members serving voting therefor, as follows: