I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
Voters in Michigan may not take photos in the polling place. (photo: Will Merydith via Flickr.com)
On Wednesday, secretary of state Terri Lynn Land announced that cameras will be prohibited at polling places on Election Day.
“…the use of video cameras, still cameras and other recording devices are prohibited in the polls when they are open for voting.“ she said in a statement. “This includes still cameras and other recording features built into many cell phones. The ban applies to all voters, challengers, poll watchers and election workers …
“The ban protects voters who may feel intimidated in the polling place by the presence of a camera,” she asserted and went on to say that under state law anyone who “deliberately exposes” their ballot will not be allowed to vote — a rule intended to deter vote-selling. She added that exceptions to the camera ban would be made for “credentialed media” with “certain restrictions.”
The announcement came in response to Video the Vote, a YouTube and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) initiative that seeks to protect voting rights by organizing citizens to document the electoral process. During early voting, Video the Vote participants have documented vote flipping on electronic voting machines, extremely long lines at early voting sites and “no match, no vote” situations in which people were thrown from the rolls due to clerical errors.
The secretary of state did not return calls from Michigan Messenger about protocols for documenting Election Day but did state that the policy was based on state laws that give election officials authority to maintain order on Election Day and prohibit people from showing the ballots to others (except for minor children or people assisting them in the voting booth).
Paul Lehto, a retired election law attorney who authored a chapter in “Loser Take All,” a book on the 2000 presidential election, called Land’s directive “anti-democratic and a violation of First Amendment rights. …
“The ban on cameras is really a ban on evidence and that is disturbing, especially because checks and balances have been completely eliminated from the vote counts, even if you vote on a paper ballot,” he told Michigan Messenger. “Voter-marked paper ballots are counted by computers, and there is literally no human being alive who has knowledge whether those vote counts are correct.”
The visible parts of the election require serious scrutiny, he said, and cameras are a help.
Michigan uses optical-scan voting systems in which people mark a paper ballot which they then place in a privacy sleeve and feed into a vote tabulating machine. Because the privacy sleeve covers the ballot when the person leaves the voting booth, Lehto said, cameras in the polling place would not compromise the secrecy of an individual’s vote.
And the secretary of state’s concern that people would be intimidated by cameras does not ring sincere, Lehto said, “since the government has expressed no concern about clamping down on the rampant taping of everybody everywhere at all times except at polling places where we really need it.”
According to Documenting Your Vote, an online resource from the Citizens Media Law Project, six states have laws that ban all filming in polling places and in 12 others (including Michigan) state officials have prohibited recording in polling places.
This election season has featured widespread discussion of concerns about vote suppression and fraud. Record-setting participation is expected on Nov. 4th, and with camera-equipped cell phones widely distributed, many people may be interested in documenting their Election Day experience.
Oakland County public access TV producer and activist Bruce Fealk is one one those interested in documenting the election. Fealk said he disagrees with the secretary of state’s argument that the presence of cameras at the polls would be disruptive.
“Banning cameras keeps irregularities, intimidation, etc., from being caught on camera and so it would be disruptive to GOP plans to suppress the vote.”
Jan BenDor of the Michigan Election Reform Alliance (MERA) said the secretary of state’s concerns about privacy are misguided.
“Each precinct has a board of election inspectors. The only thing that is secret about a polling place is the individual ballot while the person is voting it.”
She said the Open Meetings Act applies to polling places and referenced a 1988 opinion by then-Michigan Attorney General Frank Kelley which stated that any citizen has the right to observe at polling places.
MERA members have registered to observe at the polls in eight counties as “election challengers.” BenDor said they plan to observe the election process, not challenge voter eligibility.
“We are not planning to use cameras,“ BenDor told Michigan Messenger, “but would certainly like to be able to document any violations of the rights of challengers in the polling place. Land’s arbitrary policy currently limits photos and video to only her favorite media reps. Video the Vote and many local bloggers and online media are blocked by her policy.”
BenDor said she has good reason to be concerned about potential violations of the rights of challengers.
In a letter sent Tuesday, Secretary of State Elections Director Chris Thomas threatened unspecified legal action against MERA if it did not immediately promise not to attempt to observe the counting of ballots.
In the letter he said that he had read on a web site that MERA members planned to observe a manual count of ballots, a practice which he said is “obsolete” in Michigan, which uses automatic tabulation machines.
BenDor, a certified election administrator and former deputy clerk, said that there are circumstances in which poll workers must manually tally votes and that election challengers must be permitted to observe this.
Tabulators are supposed to divert ballots with write-in candidates into a separate box, and these are to be manually tallied, she explained. The diverters are not tested, and sometimes ballots with writing on them remain in the general pile. For this reason some believe the ballots should be checked for markings (some markings also disqualify ballots).
“They continually invoke the privacy of the vote as an excuse to block public knowledge as to how the votes are counted.” BenDor said.
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