What is Empower MI Vote?

Defending the right to vote and fair access to the ballot box in the State of Michigan is our primary mission.

Across the State, Republicans are attempting to change the rules to make it harder for Michiganders to vote.

The most dangerous voter suppression effort we are currently facing in the State is a petition drive called Secure MI Vote.

By shining a light on these dangerous efforts, we can make sure that our friends and neighbors decline to sign any petition forms that make it harder to vote and hold legislators accountable for the numerous attempts to chip away at your voting rights.

Here are some of the outrageous changes that Secure MI Vote wants to slip by voters:

• Mandatory submission of sensitive social security numbers to register to vote
• Making it illegal for election officials to make absentee ballot applications widely available to voters
• Requiring registered absentee voters to disclose sensitive personal information when applying for their ballots
• Creating long lines at precincts by making already overworked poll workers verify even more information than usual
  
• Eliminating the option that registered voters currently have to securely verify their identity and vote normally
• Throwing out ballots of registered voters (in person and absentee) who can’t satisfy new restrictive identity requirements, unless they go in person to their clerk’s office and present acceptable documentation within six days after the election
• Banning charitable contributions, including volunteer time, to help administer elections

Not only are the changes that they want to push through anti-voter, but the way they want to do it is anti-voter as well.

They aren’t circulating petitions so that voters can decide next November. Rather, Republicans are using a loophole in the system to pass their voter suppression agenda with a vote of the people and without it being subject to Governor Whitmer’s veto.

If they collect petition signatures from less than 4% of Michigan voters, their voter suppression package will go to the Legislature and become law without the approval of the very voters who would be negatively affected.