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Counting fights before Election Day

When it comes to the issue of voting, the two political parties agree on one thing: that voting is at the heart of the democracy.

But, after that, the agreement ends.

If you want proof of the political divide, just examine the attitude each party brings to the voting issue.

Democrats are all about getting more people to vote, while critics of the GOP say that party wants to erect impediments to voting, with all sorts of legal restrictions. Think Jim Crow laws in the South and the recent Republican-led congressional overturn of the historic Voting Rights Act signed by President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s.

In Michigan, we’ve witnessed a 40-year battle over no-reason absentee voting. Under a Republican-dominated Legislative, the only folks who were legally allowed to vote without showing up at the polls were seniors, the disabled, and those out of town on Election Day. In other words, there was a limited cadre of voters who could qualify for the absentee vote.

Dating back to former Republican Secretary of State Candice Miller, Republican SOS Terri Lynn Land, and Republican SOS Ruth Johnson, each strenuously asked the Republican lawmakers to adopt a no-reason absentee law that would open the option to everyone.

And each left office with a goose egg on that front.

The R’s offered a variety of explanations as to why it was a bad idea, but at the nub of the opposition was something more blatant, more political, and more secret: Michigan is basically a blue state, meaning there are more Democrats than Republicans, so do the math. If you make it easier for folks to vote, Republicans might lose more elections, which is why the law was never altered one iota.

But then the residents got off their collective behinds and signed an election reform petition and placed the issue on the statewide ballot, where a whopping majority said, “Let everyone vote absentee.” And now the Democrats charge that the other guys are conniving to find other means to “depress that vote.”

The current manifestation of that is the dispute over when to count absentee ballots.

Since the passage of the new law, local clerks have seen a massive increase in absentee voting, in numbers never before seen. Voting is up by 60% to 80% in some areas, and there are 700,000 ballots out right now for what may turn out to be a pivotal president primary vote — at least for the D’s — on March 10.

Those clerks can only count the absentee votes on Election Day, and, while some would like to start tabulation days or weeks before the election, which is done in about 30 other states, there is no way the R’s will sign off on that.

Clerks fear the reporting of the election results will be significantly delayed, by hours, if not days, as weary election workers paw over an avalanche of absentee votes well into the wee hours of the morning.

And, remember, many of the election workers average older than 70, so they could be struggling to stay awake to get the job done.

Clerks want shifts of poll workers to avoid fatigue and counting errors, which could gum up the credibility of the election process.

Can you imagine the headlines out of major cities? “Two days after election, Detroit still counting.”

The R’s have not signed off on the request from the clerks, yet. The R’s figure all those Democratic clerks or election workers, sworn to uphold the sanctity of the election, will find a way to report the election results to Democratic insiders, who will then take appropriate action to make sure more Democrats vote, thus titling the election.

There is no proof of that happening in other states, but that doesn’t matter to the R’s.

The Republican Senate Majority Leader chimed in on the issue the other day, when asked if he would allow the clerks to begin processing, but not counting, the absentee votes the day before the election. He thought that was a solution in search of a problem that may not exist.

Then he added: Who would be there to monitor the prep process, to make sure votes were not counted?

“It’s the camel’s nose under the tent,” he warned everyone.

With the Iowa caucus debacle still fresh in the clerks’ collective minds, they don’t want any miscues in March, and certainly not in November, when absentee votes may make up half or more of the total vote count.

The object here is to get it right, and not rush to get it early and wrong.

The integrity of the election also goes to the heart of the democracy, but, at this read, it looks like the R’s and D’s are having trouble finding a common ground to ensure that is preserved.

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