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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is taking the lead on preventing future election fraud, releasing a 9-point plan to protect Florida elections. Read it here.

In this column, I'll review each of the proposals and discuss their applicability in an election reform law in Michigan.

1. Counties would be prohibited from receiving grants from private third-party organizations for “get out the vote” initiatives.

"Get out the vote" initiatives are a legal method for tax-exempt non-profits to engage in partisan electioneering. These efforts tend to benefit Democrats to begin with, since those who are eligible to vote but fail to vote tend to be ideal Democrat voters: ill-informed and lazy. It is all the more beneficial to Democrats when the "non-profit" effort is targeted toward Democrat-leaning districts.

As the Thomas More Society's report, "The Legitimacy and Effect of Private Funding in Federal and State Electoral Processes" noted:

CTCL [Center for Technology and Civic Life, a left-wing nonprofit funded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg] awarded eleven grants in Michigan. Recipient cities were Detroit ($3,512,000); Lansing ($443,742); East Lansing ($43,850); Flint ($475,625); Ann Arbor ($417,000); Muskegon ($433,580); Pontiac ($405,564); Romulus ($16,645); Kalamazoo ($218,869); and Saginaw ($402,878). In the 2016 election, only Saginaw was won by candidate Donald Trump; the remainder were won by candidate Hillary Clinton. In total, $5,939,235 was awarded to the ten jurisdictions where candidate Clinton won and only $402,878 where candidate Trump won.

The report understates the partisan bias of these grants. Detroit, Ann Arbor, Flint, and Pontiac are overwhelmingly Democrat areas.

Moreover, the report noted, these grants create legal liabilities for recipients:

The claw back and reporting provisions in contracts between CTCL and local counties and municipalities, if exercised, will result in inaccurate recordkeeping and state reporting under HAVA [Help America Vote Act] 254(a)(5) and the Uniform Administrative Requirements for Grants and Cooperative Agreements with State and Local Governments at 41 CFR Part 105-71.

The claw back language in the CTCL agreements represents a longterm, contingent liability for counties and municipalities who received the CTCL grants. These liabilities pose long-term audit, bonding, or pension risks to those counties who received CTCL grants. [...]

The appropriate mechanism for charitable donations for electoral purposes is through donations earmarked into the general fund of the individual state legislatures. There is no state or federal statutory authority for counties, municipalities, or other local electoral jurisdictions to solicit, receive, or appropriate private funding outside of state HAVA implementation plans.

Not only was the funding problematic and distributed in a partisan manner, it was entirely unnecessary. As the report noted:

Local electoral officials in Michigan who performed due diligence on CTCL grants observed the sufficiency of CARES [Corona Virus Aid and Relief and Economic Security] Act funding and remarked as to the non-necessity of CTCL grants. As example, Michigan’s Oakland County Clerk Lisa Brown decided not to seek CTCL funding stating: “We already had an opportunity through the CARES Act to get extra equipment and things we would need at the county level. It seemed to me that they were offering up the same sort of thing.”

The December 2019 HAVA Title II 251 Report to the EAC from Michigan Secretary Jocelyn Benson documented an unexpended HAVA surplus for administration of statewide elections of $1,285,975.

The public record also indicates that Secretary Benson was aware of the availability of adequate public funding for dissemination to Ann Arbor, Flint, Lansing, East Lansing, Muskegon, Pontiac, Romulus, Kalamazoo, and Saginaw – jurisdictions that received CTCL grants.

The report, which contains far more information to cast doubt on the legitimacy of private, partisan funding of public elections, concludes:

The confusion and negative effect from illegitimate infusion of private funding in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and several other states during the 2020 election can be shown to have had a disparate and inequitable impact on the electorate.

Although history is replete with examples of elite groups attempting to gain influence, the current incidence of CTCL and other private donors purposefully injecting hundreds of millions of dollars into swing states is troubling because county officials who should know better actually accepted the grants, to the exclusion of abundantly available public funding. Even the most casual of observers can understand that acceptance of any private funding for administration of public elections creates inequity, dependency, and the potential for collusion, or even fraud.

All well-taken points. Michigan should follow Florida's lead and prohibit private funding of public elections.

2. Ballot boxes would be examined for their trustworthiness.

This proposal needs elaboration, but it is certainly true that ballot boxes should contain the highest level of security possible, particularly absentee ballot containers.

Michigan introduced outdoor absentee ballot drop boxes in 2020. Their security features are unknown. At the very least, they extend the chain of custody of ballots and introduce a new potential point of failure. There is no statutory guidance for the security of absentee ballots in outdoor drop boxes. At least one outdoor ballot box was the target of an arson attack last year.

Michigan should prohibit the use of outdoor ballot drop boxes, and require that absentee ballots received by the clerk are held in secure boxes prior to signature verification and tabulation.

3. Ballot harvesting would be checked so that no one could have a ballot other then their own or their immediate family.

Ballot harvesting is illegal in Michigan. In fact, it is a felony. However, in 2020, the Michigan Court of Claims suspended the law, using COVID as the pretext. Litigation may be necessary to prevent the law from being suspended again in 2022.

4. Vote-by-mail ballots could not be sent en masse; only voters asking for a ballot would receive one.

It is shocking that this occurred in Michigan in 2020, but voters have reported receiving unsolicited ballots--not just applications, but ballots. The law needs to be clarified that it is a felony for any election official to mail an absentee ballot to a voter that did not request one, and a request for an absentee ballot applies to only one election. Reportedly, clerks automatically mailed ballot in November to voters that requested one for the August election.

5. Vote-by-mail requests must be made each election year.

They should be required for each election, not just once a year.

6. Vote by mail ballot signatures must match the most recent signature on file.

More importantly, there needs to be clear and specific guidelines for signature checks, and they should be uniform for all verification purposes. Signatures for citizens' petitions should be reviewed by the same standards as ballot applications.

7. Political parties and candidates must be permitted to observe the signature matching process.

Yes. This is critical. Currently, absentee voter signature verification occurs behind closed doors with no scrutiny from poll challengers or poll watchers. When Absentee Voter Counting Boards convene, the signatures are already "verified" and the observers simply watch ballots being removed from the envelopes and fed into the tabulators.

The entire absentee ballot process should be conducted at public meetings.

The same policy should apply to in-person elections. When I worked at a polling location in Detroit on November 3, 2020, no signature checks of voters were conducted at all.

8. Supervisors of Elections must report how many ballots have been requested, how many have been received, how many are left to be counted, and must post over-vote ballots to be considered by the canvassing board on their website before the canvassing board meets.

Most of this is already law in Michigan, except that over-vote ballots should not need to be considered by the canvassing board. An over-vote ballot -- where, say, a voter votes for more than one candidate in a race where he's only supposed to vote for one -- should simply not have the vote count in that race. It should be unlawful in Michigan to process an over-vote any other way.

9. Precincts must have real-time reporting of voter turnout data.

It's not clear what exactly this means. Precincts currently report daily how many absentee ballot applications have been mailed and received, and how many absentee ballots have been mailed and received. Precincts should not be able to report throughout Election Day how many ballots have been cast, because that would require either equipment being connected to the Internet, or poll workers constantly updating the clerk's office.

Overall, this is an excellent list of important reforms that Michigan should consider as well.

As DeSantis said: