Democratic group Priorities USA filed a lawsuit on Oct. 30 alleging Michigan violates voter rights when allowing absentee ballots to be thrown out if voter signatures do not match those on other documents held by election officials.
Priorities USA is a political action committee originally founded in 2011 to support the re-election of former President Barack Obama. Their lawsuit alleges Michigan law has clerks compare voter signatures on absentee ballot applications with those on qualified state voter lists. If the signatures do not match, the clerk must reject the absentee application. Similarly, if the signature on an absentee ballot does not match the signature on another reference signature, the clerk must throw the vote out.
A Priorities USA statement said the signature-match law violates citizens’ right to vote and to procedural process under both the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Priorities USA Chairman Guy Cecil said in a press release the alleged violation continues to create obstacles for voters in Michigan.
“In recent years, this unnecessary provision has led to the rejection of countless votes cast by the citizens across Michigan,” Cecil said. “This has compromised the fundamental right to vote while creating unnecessary barriers to the ballot box in the state. Because of this, we believe it is imperative that we issue a challenge that highlights the constitutional violations this law imposes.”
The Michigan law can particularly affect students who are from outside of Michigan but cannot return home to vote in elections. LSA senior Nesreen Ezzeddine, co-founder of the Democracy Institute, said the signature matching law is not a valid way of checking for voter fraud and mainly serves to influence which votes are accepted.
“I think, at the end of the day, there is more voter disenfranchisement than there is voter fraud,” Ezzeddine said. “This affects a lot of university and college students who aren’t able to go back home. In terms of signature matching, it’s not a very effective way of measuring what ballots are valid … It’s pretty much being used for no reason other than trying to get some votes not to count.”
Public Policy junior Camille Mancuso, communications director of College Democrats, echoed Ezzeddine’s sentiments, saying if the lawsuit is unsuccessful it could undo progress in absentee voting rights in Michigan.
“There’s no structured process for checking these absentee ballot signatures,” Mancuso said. “It’s all up to the discretion of the clerk. So, without any strict measure of quality or accountability absentee voters can be seriously disenfranchised, and we as Michigan citizens can be assured that everyone’s votes are being counted equally.”
Mancuso added the lawsuit’s results would directly impact University students who are not from the Ann Arbor area and cannot go home on Election Day to vote.
“Outside of Ann Arbor, then, they’re going to have to most likely do an absentee vote,” she said. “So, it makes it a lot more difficult for the students to be able to vote. In addition, a lot of students will just early vote in Ann Arbor, through the absentee ballot procedure. It makes it a lot more difficult to ensure that these ballots are going to be counted and that these students are going to be able to have their voices heard in the election.”
The University’s chapter of College Republicans declined to comment, saying they had nothing further to add.
Ezzeddine highlighted voter accessibility as a concern not just in Michigan, but across the country. She praised Michigan’s passing of Proposal 2, a citizen-initiated proposal to end gerrymandering, but said the University could help more students engage with elections by providing transportation to voter locations and by raising awareness of elections outside of the presidential election.
“In terms of Michigan as a state, I think we’ve done pretty good in passing Prop 2 last year,” Ezzeddine said. “I think we’re moving in the right direction. It’s about making it easy for voters I think, first on the day of registration. The second thing is making it more accessible for students. For example, having voting day as a holiday or allowing students to take class off to make sure that accessibility is there.”
Mancuso agreed, saying the proposition accessibility for voting has improved in Michigan. She highlighted the need for same-day voter registration and no-reason absentee voting to both enable and encourage people to vote in Michigan.
“Before the proposition passed in 2018, Michigan was ranked one of the worst states for voting laws,” Mancuso said. “Especially one of the worst places for college students to vote. Just because of all the difficulty in absentee voting was about having to declare a reason for absentee voting, and having to vote in person for the first time, not having any system of same-day or automatic voter registration — all of that made it really, really difficult for students.”
With laws in place to fight voter fraud and ensure election security, Mancuso said the lawsuit’s success would help increase accessibility for already disenfranchised voters by providing a stronger accountability system.
“We want secure elections, we want fair elections and we want accessible elections,” Mancuso said. “But this lawsuit will ensure that those standards are not arbitrary, and that there is a system of accountability, so that when people are evaluating signatures for example, they’re making sure that they’re doing that in a fair way — that it is highlighting the importance of people voting and not just arbitrarily deciding to throw out a ballot because the signature may not exactly match.”