In The Chair: Geiss
The Senate agreed to the title of the bill.
Senator McBroom asked and was granted unanimous consent to make a statement and moved that the statement be printed in the Journal.
The motion prevailed.
Senator McBroom’s statement is as follows:
This bill is attempting to make our law fit with constitutional changes that have happened and regarding that, this bill has been created that would disallow our clerks from serving on their local county party executive committee and also conducting the audit at the same time. It’s really probably an oversight in the process that happened during the proposal’s writing and is making a big headache for our clerks and for everybody else. My amendment seeks to remedy that problem by allowing the clerks to suspend their membership in their county party from the day of the election until the completion of the post-election audits. That way, they can still do their job that they’ve been elected and constitutionally obligated to do, but also not violate the law that says a party official can’t participate in the audit process.
Ultimately, I believe if we don’t adopt some sort of change like this, the contradictions within the Constitution of what clerks’ jobs are to do versus what they’re allowed to do is going to create a necessity for the courts to simply tell us what’s going to happen in the end. We could avoid that by adopting this amendment. I ask for a “yes” vote.
The following bill was read a third time:
Senate Bill No. 590, entitled
A bill to amend 1954 PA 116, entitled “Michigan election law,” by amending section 13 (MCL 168.13) and by adding section 845a.
The question being on the passage of the bill,
The bill was passed, a majority of the members serving voting therefor, as follows: