August 7, 2012
KATHLEEN GRAY, DETROIT FREE PRESS
When Rich Robinson went to vote in East Lansing on Tuesday morning, he was surprised to see a question on his application for a ballot asking if he is a U.S. citizen.
As the executive director of the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, Robinson knows a little bit about election law. He thought the bill requiring a citizenship declaration before receiving a ballot was vetoed by Gov. Rick Snyder. So he refused to answer the question.
He was told he couldn’t vote
“I left and called the state Bureau of Elections and confirmed that was one of the bills that had been vetoed,” he said. “So it was very perturbing to me that this is not a legal requirement and they’re still hassling people.”
Secretary of State Ruth Johnson ordered the question put on ballot applications before the presidential primary in February, even though there was no legislation that required the citizenship question. The Legislature obliged by passing the law in June, but Snyder vetoed the bill, saying it would create undue confusion for voters and poll workers. Voters already have to affirm their U.S. citizenship before being allowed to register to vote.
Pat Selby, election counsel for Project Vote in Michigan, said she had been hearing from confused voters all day about the question.
“Having the question on the box is a source of confusion. Election officials knew it wasn’t to be enforced but individual poll workers didn’t understand,” she said. “And there were places where it was on the form and places where it wasn’t on the form. Instructions should have come out from the Secretary of State right after the veto.”
In Detroit, the citizenship question was on the ballot application, because they were printed before Snyder’s veto.
“But we’re not enforcing it,” said Daniel Baxter, the city’s deputy election director. “But we didn’t want to waste the applications.”
By midday, the Secretary of State sent out a clarification to county and local clerks telling them not to enforce the citizenship declaration on the application.
Clerks were told that if a voter refused to check the box they were to say to the voter: “Under the Michigan Constitution and election laws you must be a citizen of the United States in order to vote.”
And then the clerks were to hand the voter a ballot. READ MORE