Those planning to vote in-person during the general election this fall may be presented with a unique variety of “I Voted” sticker designs created by Michiganders.
The Michigan Department of State announced Wednesday it has selected nine winning designs from the state’s first ever “I Voted” sticker design contest, which will be made available for clerks to hand out to voters at the polls on Nov. 5.
Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson congratulated contest winners in a news release issued Wednesday, adding that she was “overwhelmed by the enthusiasm and creativity from the people of our great state.”
“Now,” she says, “let’s use the same energy in casting a vote this November. I encourage every eligible voter to make a plan now to have your voice heard – vote with an absentee ballot, at an early voting site, or on Election Day – and feel proud to wear a sticker designed by a fellow Michigander.”
More than 480 designs were submitted during the contest, which launched in May, and over 57,700 public votes were cast for the winners, according to the state.
Three winning designs were selected from three separate categories: elementary/middle school (grades K-8), high school (grades 9-12), and general entry — open to Michigan residents of all ages.
Submissions received were narrowed down to 25 semifinalists from each category by the Michigan Collegiate Student Advisory Task Force before the contest opened up for a public vote.
Check out the winning designs from each category in the photo gallery below.
Created by Jane Hynous of Grosse Pointe, a student at Brownell Middle School, for the Elementary/Middle School category. (Courtesy State of Michigan)
Created by Gabby Warner of Rockford, for the Elementary/Middle School category.(Courtesy State of Michigan)
Created by Katelyn Stouffer-Hopkins of Lansing, for the Elementary/Middle School category. (Courtesy State of Michigan)
Created by Olivia Smiertka of Holly, a student at Holly High School, for the High School category.(Courtesy State of Michigan)
Created by Michelle Lekhtman of West Bloomfield, a student at West Bloomfield High School, for the High School category.(Courtesy State of Michigan)
Created by Andrew Brasher of Saint Louis, a student at Alma High School, for the High School category.(Courtesy State of Michigan)
Created by Kelsey Winiarski of Livonia, for the General Entry category.(Courtesy State of Michigan)
Created by Breanna Tanner of Grand Rapids, for the General Entry category.(Courtesy State of Michigan)
Created by Madelyn VerVaecke of Livonia, for the General Entry category.(Courtesy State of Michigan)
For more information about voting and elections in Michigan, visit michigan.gov/vote.
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As polls and political pundits work to predict the still evolving presidential race, an expert in Michigan says if the vote is close, one group “could potentially decide the state.”
Erick Gonzalez Jeunke is a political analyst specializing in Latinx politics at Michigan State University. In an interview with the Michigan Public Radio Network, he said the state’s 400,000 eligible Latinos voters could hold the key to winning in Michigan, if the campaigns reach out to them.
Listen: Political analyst says Michigan Latino voters ‘could potentially decide the state’
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Michelle Jokisch Polo, WKAR News: In 2020 Joe Biden won the presidential election in Michigan by fewer than 200,000 votes. With more than 300,000 eligible Latino voters in Michigan, this group could prove vital in the state. How are parties engaging this voting bloc?
Erick Gonzalez Jeunke: I haven’t seen a lot of engagement for specifically this voting block. What that means is what they should have been doing and what I haven’t seen a lot of, but a lot of this happens behind the scenes, obviously, are registration drives. One of the gaps for Latino voters nationally, and then of course here in Michigan, is not just turning out to vote, but being registered to vote. A large part of that gap — about 70% of eligible voters — are even registered to vote. And so that’s part of the big gap. I mean, this is one of the lingering things, if you account for that, once you just look at registered voters, Latinos turn out at about the same rates as other groups, but the gap is really in getting individuals registered to vote. So that requires a lot of work, that requires the parties caring about these voters. Now when we get into this part of the season, a lot of the parties both nationally and here in Michigan, either leave that up to other groups, or they say, ‘look, we have limited resources. We can’t go out and mobilize people who aren’t registered.’ So a lot of that work takes place in the years and months that lead up to these elections.
MJP: This time around, it seems that there may have been fewer young democrats showing up to vote like they did in 2020, in the state primary election. Why do you think this is and tell us about the young Latino vote in November?
EGJ: I think it’s probably due to a not very competitive set of federal races, and then earlier in the year, a not very competitive presidential primary. But it’s also just an enthusiasm gap. We’re right in the middle of seeing this change with the change at the top of the ticket from Biden to Harris. I was just looking at some national polling data today, and what’s happening here in the Midwest and in Michigan is that Harris has seemed to have activated — particularly younger voters’ — enthusiasm about this race. So paying attention, getting excited, and that excitement turns into actual voting. It can turn into knocking on doors. It can turn into working for the campaign. So it’s still a little bit early to see what the overall effect of this is, but the early signs indicate that a change at the top of the ticket may reverse some of this lack of enthusiasm that we saw in the primaries, and particularly for younger Latinos.
MJP: How important do you think the Latino voting bloc is for the state’s general election?
EGJ: It depends how close the race is. It could potentially decide the state, and yet that depends on if the parties do the work to mobilize and get Latinos who aren’t registered, registered to get folks to turn out. So unfortunately, we won’t know until after the election. And it comes down to how close is Michigan actually going to be? It’s looking a lot less close than it did a month ago. But things could change, and we could go back to a really close race, if I had to put money on it right now, that it’s probably not going to be as close as we thought it was a month ago. But if it’s close, the Latino vote could be really, really important, and the Democratic and Republican parties could say, ‘boy, we really should have done more work to mobilize Latino voters in Michigan, because we could have taken it.’ And I think both parties would say the same thing about Pennsylvania andWisconsin.
Use the media player above to hear the full interview with Erick Gonzalez Jeunke, political analyst specializing in Latinx politics at Michigan State University.
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Barron Trump has finally revealed his college choice — New York University — by turning up at the downtown Manhattan campus Wednesday morning for his first day of classes.
The 18-year-old son of Donald and Melania Trump sported a white polo shirt, Adidas sneakers and black Swiss Gear backpack, casually slung over his shoulder, as he was seen heading into the dean’s office building, followed by Secret Service agents, the New York Post reported. The Secret Service agents are there to guard him as his father, the former president, is running to return to the White House.
The sighting of Trump’s 6-foot-7-inch son ends months of speculation about his college choice, according to the Daily Beast, which first reported that NYU was his top choice. Barron is enrolled at NYU’s Stern Undergraduate College.
NYU is No. 35 overall on the U.S. News & World Report ranking of best colleges and No. 5 for its business programs. By choosing NYU, Barron is breaking with Trump family tradition. His father has boasted of his Ivy League education at University of Pennsylvania, which is ranked No. 6 by U.S. News and World Report. His older half-siblings, Don Jr., Ivanka and Tiffany, also graduated from Penn, while Eric Trump graduated from Georgetown University.
But NYU has the advantage of being Barron’s hometown university. NYU is kind of down the road — Fifth Avenue — from where Barron spent his childhood, raised by his mother in his father’s gilded penthouse in Trump Tower. It wasn’t clear, though, Wednesday, whether Barron will live on campus or will live with his mother at Trump Tower.
The fact that Melania Trump was seen arriving at Trump Tower last week fueled speculation that Barron would attend college in New York City. One way that Trump World sources have explained her absence from her husband’s campaign has been by saying that she sees herself as a “hands-on” mother, whose first priority is her son, Page Six previously reported. Some people have taken the “hands-on” mother description to mean that she would reside close to wherever he is attending college.
Donald Trump recently told the Daily Mail that while the family had considered other colleges, but Barron ultimately liked NYU the best.
“It’s a very high quality place. He liked it. He liked the school,” Trump told the Daily Mail. “I went to Wharton, and that was certainly one that we were considering. We didn’t do that … We went for Stern.”
“He’s a very high aptitude child, but he’s no longer a child. He’s just passed into something beyond child-dom.”
Barron Trump gestures after his father Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump introduced him during a campaign rally at Trump National Doral Miami, Tuesday, July 9, 2024, in Doral, Fla. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)
The presidential election is a few months away, and American Muslim voters are weighing out their options for the next president.
Youssef Chouhoud, an associate professor of political science at Christopher Newport University in Virginia, studies trends involving American Muslim voters. He says this year many American Muslims are concerned about Gaza.
“Certainly one of if not the top, if not for some American Muslims, the only issue that they care about is the crisis in Gaza, and so that holds particularly heavy weight this election cycle,” Chouhoud said.
He says American Muslims are nestled within the American fabric, concerned about the economy, climate change, health care and immigration policies.
After 9/11, Chouhoud says, American Muslims were against the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. He says after 2010, many focused on domestic issues.
But he says that changed after the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel — during which Hamas killed 1,200 people — and the invasion of Gaza that followed, where the latest death toll stands at more than 40,000 Palestinians killed.
Chouhoud says many American Muslims view themselves as part of the extended Muslim nation, or the ummah.
“One of the beliefs in Islam is that anything that affects one part of the Muslim ummah affects you as well,” he said.
Chouhoud says many American Muslims also have close connections to Gaza.
“Everybody in the American Muslim context, is probably only one degree removed from somebody in Gaza,” he said.
Chouhoud says American Muslims are stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to voting for the next president.
“They don’t, by and large, support a Trump presidency, for the reason that during the Trump administration, and you know, the explicit policies that Trump wanted to and has enacted have negatively affected American Muslims.”
He says many American Muslims say they do not feel like they belong to either Republican or Democratic parties.
“The sense of homelessness, I think, that American Muslims feel politically, is something that weighs heavy on them, and something that you know is going to probably continue from now until they go into the voting booth,” he said.
Chouhoud says things are likely to remain up in the air until the November elections.
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A Michigan Court of Claims judge acted quickly Tuesday to deny Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s request to be removed from the state’s presidential ballot. That’s after Kennedy suspended his campaign last week to back Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Kennedy wants a court to reverse the determination of election officials in the Secretary of State’s office that he missed the deadline for removing his name as the nominee of the Natural Law Party of Michigan. Kennedy is trying to end his candidacy in Michigan and other swing states where he could siphon support from former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee.
“Plaintiff, a public figure, does not want to represent to the citizens of Michigan that he is vying for their votes for the position of President of the United States,” said Kennedy’s legal filing. “Keeping his name on the ballot against his wishes compels this speech and subjects him to derision, anger, reputational harm, and loss of good will by those who would vote for him based on this speech and later find out their vote was wasted and in vain.”
Kennedy argued the deadline cited by the state elections bureau applies only to down-ballot races and not to candidates for president.
Court of Claims Judge Christopher Yates dispatched the case very quickly, noting the urgency of resolving election-related questions this late in the cycle. Yates wrote the law is “clear and conclusive” that election officials in the Secretary of State’s office are not empowered to go along with Kennedy’s “self-serving act”
“Elections are not just games,” he wrote, “and the Secretary of State is not obligated to honor the whims of candidates for public office.”
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel praised the ruling.
“Michigan election law in this instance is unambiguous and the Department of State made the correct decision,” she said in a written statement. “…The law does not apply less because a candidate changes their plans. I appreciate the Court making a quick and wise ruling on this matter.”
Kennedy’s Michigan attorneys did not reply to a request for comment or plans to appeal.
If history is any guide, it is highly unlikely that Kennedy would win Michigan’s 15 electoral votes. The last third-party candidate to win Michigan was former President Teddy Roosevelt, who left the Republican Party to run as the candidate of the Progressive “Bull Moose” Party in 1912. That helped Democratic nominee Woodrow Wilson unseat Republican incumbent President William Howard Taft.
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The Detroit Lions kick off the 2024 NFL season in an unfamiliar role — Super Bowl contender.
The team has never played in one and hasn’t won a league championship since 1957. They came close last season, leading for most of the NFC title game before the San Francisco 49ers came back to win, 34 to 31.
Die-hard Lions fans have endured more than 60 years of dashed hopes and dismal play, during which one family has owned the franchise — the Fords.
Author Bill Morris has written a new book, “The Lions Finally Roar.” It focuses on the team’s history of failure and its more recent success.
A door closes, a window opens
William Clay Ford, a grandson of Henry Ford, bought a share of the team in the 1950s and became the sole owner in 1963.
Morris says frustration motivated Ford’s interest in the Lions.
“I think it was a sort of reaction to a rejection he suffered inside Ford Motor Company,” Morris said.
William Clay Ford owned the Detroit Lions for over 50 years.
William Clay Ford designed the Continental Mark II in the 1950s. Morris says Ford was immensely proud of the car. But at $10,000, it was too expensive for most consumers.
“Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Liz Taylor all wanted to have one for themselves, which they bought, but not many other people did,” Morris said.
The author notes the company lost about $1,000 for every Mark II it made. William Clay Ford’s older brother, Henry Ford II, killed the project. Morris says that was a major blow to the younger Ford, and a big reason why he took an interest in the Lions.
“He saw that as a fallback and a way to make his mark, since he couldn’t do it inside the Ford Motor Company,” Morris said.
A dynasty of despair
William Clay Ford owned the Lions from 1963 until his death in 2014. During those 50-plus years, the team had 13 winning seasons and won a single playoff game.
Morris says Ford cared deeply about the Lions and wanted them to be successful.
Bill Morris has written novels about Detroit.
“The players, for the most part, adored him,” Morris said. “He was, personally, a very likeable man, and people who knew him loved him.”
The problem, Morris says, was that Ford hired a string of executives — including Russ Thomas and Matt Millen — who were not good at their jobs.
“He had never really run a business,” Morris says. “He had a knack for choosing the wrong people and sticking with them for reasons that nobody really knows to this day.”
After Ford died, his wife Martha became the sole owner, but the team fared no better on the field. Mrs. Ford relinquished control of the Lions and passed it on to her daughter, Sheila Ford Hamp, in 2020. The team won five games in Hamp’s first year. She fired head coach Matt Patricia and general manager Bob Quinn and brought in a new regime in 2021.
“Chris Spielman, a former Lions player came in,” Morris said. “Then they came up with a general manager, Brad Holmes, and a coach, Dan Campbell, who were really smart choices as it would turn out.”
Dan Campbell speaks with the media during a press conference in Allen Park, Mich.
At first, it didn’t look like it would work out. The Lions lost 10 of their first 11 games in 2021 and started 1-6 the following season.
Morris says, like her father, Hamp remained loyal to the people she hired despite the rough start.
“She walked into the practice facility in the middle of that season and said, ‘I understand it’s going to be tough, and we’re going to stick with these guys,'” Morris said.
After that, the team won eight of its last 10 games, finishing 9-8 in 2022. The next year, the Lions claimed their first division title since 1993 and won back-to-back home playoff games for the first time in franchise history.
A liability becomes an asset
Morris says while loyalty may have been her father’s weakness, it’s been Hamp’s strength so far.
“She stuck with the right people, unlike her father, who stuck with the wrong people,” Morris said.
The book arrived in stores on Sept. 3, 2024. The Lions open the 2024 season against former franchise quarterback Matthew Stafford and the Los Angeles Rams at Ford Field on Sunday, Sept. 8. Detroit beat L.A. in last season’s playoffs.
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By BRIAN SLODYSKO and DAN MERICA The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Italo Medelius was leading a volunteer drive to put Cornel West on North Carolina’s presidential ballot last spring when he received an unexpected call from a man named Paul who said he wanted to help.
Though Medelius, co-chairman of West’s “Justice for All Party,” welcomed the assistance, the offer would complicate his life, provoking threats and drawing him into a state election board investigation of the motivations, backgrounds and suspect tactics of his new allies.
His is not an isolated case.
Across the country, a network of Republican political operatives, lawyers and their allies is trying to shape November’s election in ways that favor former President Donald Trump. Their goal is to prop up third-party candidates such as West who offer liberal voters an alternative that could siphon away support from Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.
It is not clear who is paying for the effort, but it could be impactful in states that were decided by miniscule margins in the 2020 election won by Democrat Joe Biden.
This is money West’s campaign does not have, and he has encouraged the effort. Last month the academic told The Associated Press that “American politics is highly gangster-like activity” and he “just wanted to get on that ballot.”
Trump has offered praise for West, calling him “one of my favorite candidates.” Another is Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Trump favors both for the same reason. “I like her very much. You know why? She takes 100% from them. He takes 100%.”
Democrats are exploring ways to lift Randall Terry, an anti-abortion presidential candidate for the Constitution Party, believing he could draw voters from Trump.
But the GOP effort appears to be more far-reaching. After years of Trump accusing Democrats of “rigging” elections, it is his allies who are now mounting a sprawling and at times deceptive campaign to tilt the vote in his favor.
“The fact that either of the two major parties would attempt financially and otherwise to support a third-party spoiler candidate as part of its effort to win is an unfortunate byproduct” of current election laws “that facilitate spoilers,” said Edward B. Foley, a law professor who leads Ohio State University’s election law program. “This phenomenon is equally problematic whichever of the two major party engages in it.”
One key figure in the push is Paul Hamrick, the man on the other end of the call with Medelius in North Carolina.
Hamrick serves as counsel for the Virginia-based nonprofit People Over Party, which has pushed to get West on the ballot in Arizona, Maine, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Virginia, as well as North Carolina, records show.
In an interview, Hamrick declined to say who else besides him was orchestrating the effort and he would not divulge who was funding it. He vigorously disputed any suggestion that he was a Republican, but acknowledged that he was not a Democrat, either.
His history is complex.
Hamrick was chief of staff to former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, a one-term Democrat who was booted from office in 2003 and later was convicted and sentenced to prison on federal bribery, conspiracy and mail fraud charges. Hamrick was charged alongside his former boss in two separate cases. One was dismissed and he was acquitted in the other.
Though he insists he is not a Republican, Hamrick voted in Alabama’s Republican primary in 2002, 2006 and 2010, according to state voting records maintained by the political data firm L2. He was tapped briefly in 2011 to work for the Alabama state Senate’s Republican majority. And since 2015, according to federal campaign finance disclosures, he has contributed only to GOP causes, including $2,500 to the Alabama Republican Party and $3,300 to Georgia Rep. Mike Collins, a Republican who has trafficked in conspiracy theories.
Hamrick denied that he voted in any Republican primaries, suggesting that the voting data was inaccurate.
For years, he was a consultant for Matrix LLC, an Alabama firm known for its hardball approach.
Matrix LLC was part of an effort in Florida to run “ghost candidates” against elected officials who had raised the ire of executives for Florida Power & Light, the state’s largest utility.
Daniella Levine Cava, the current mayor of Miami-Dade County, was a target. As a county commissioner, Levine Cava had fought with FPL. When she ran for reelection in 2018, Matrix covertly financed a third-party candidate they hoped would siphon enough votes to tip her seat to a Republican challenger, The Miami Herald reported in 2022.
Hamrick was deeply involved. A company he created paid the spoiler candidate a $60,000 salary and rented a $2,300-a-month home for him, according to the newspaper and business filings made in Alabama. Hamrick said the candidate worked for him to help recruit business. Hamrick denied having anything to do with the man’s campaign.
Either way, it did not work. Levine Cava was reelected before winning the mayor’s seat in 2020.
Now Hamrick is playing a prominent role to place West’s name on the ballot in competetive states. Hamrick surfaced in Arizona two weeks ago after a woman told the AP that a document was fraudulently submitted in her name to Arizona’s secretary of state in which she purportedly agreed to serve as an elector for West. She said her signature was forged and she never agreed to be an elector.
After the AP published her account, Hamrick said he spoke to the woman’s husband, trying to rectify the situation and “gave some information.” Hamrick declined to say what information was shared. He also tried to persuade another elector who backed out to recommit to West, according to interviews and voicemails.
The next day, with the deadline to qualify for the Arizona ballot just hours away, Brett Johnson, a prominent Republican lawyer, and Amanda Reeve, a former GOP state lawmaker, made house visits to each as they tried to persuade both to sign new paperwork to serve as West electors.
Johnson and Reeve work for Snell & Wilmer, which has done $257,000 worth of business for the Republican National Committee over the past two years, campaign finance disclosures show.
Hamrick declined to comment on the role of Johnson and Reeve. They did not respond to requests for comment.
West did not qualify for the Arizona ballot.
Other Republican-aligned law firms also have been involved in the national push, opposing Democrat-backed challenges to West’s placement on the ballot:
— In Georgia, Bryan Tyson, a partner at the Election Law Group, represented the state Republican Party as it tried to keep West on the ballot. The firm has collected $60,000 in payments from the RNC since April, campaign finance records show. Tyson did not respond to a request for comment.
On Thursday, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger overruled an administrative law judge and placed West, Stein and Party for Socialism and Liberation nominee Claudia De la Cruz on the ballot. Tyson did not respond to a message seeking comment.
— In North Carolina, Phil Strach, a member of the Republican National Lawyers Association, successfully challenged in court a North Carolina State Board of Elections decision to bar West from the ballot. Strach did not respond to a message left for him.
— In Michigan, John Bursch, a senior lawyer for the Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative legal group that helped overturn Roe v. Wade, successfully fended off a challenge to West’s placement on the ballot. Bursch’s firm, Bursch Law PLLC, was paid $25,000 by Trump’s campaign in November 2020 for “RECOUNT: LEGAL CONSULTING,” according to campaign finance disclosures. Bursch did not respond to a request for comment.
— In Pennsylvania, a lawyer with long-standing ties to Republican candidates and causes, unsuccessfully argued in August for West to stay on the ballot. The attorney, Matt Haverstick, declined to say in an interview who hired him or why. People Over Party, the group Hamrick is affiliated with, had tried to get West on the ballot.
None of these actions was funded by West’s campaign, though he and his “Justice for All” party have coordinated at times with Hamrick’s People Over Party, according to legal filings, a news release and social media posts.
In North Carolina, People Over Party, worked with Blitz Canvassing and Campaign & Petition Management — two firms that routinely work for the GOP — to gather signatures for West. Hamrick later responded in writing on behalf of workers for the two companies after the state election board opened its inquiry.
Jefferson Thomas, a longtime Republican operative from Colorado, submitted petition signatures that his firm, The Synapse Group, gathered on behalf of Stein in New Hampshire, records show. He did not respond to requests for comment.
In Wisconsin, Blair Group Consulting oversaw West’s petition signature drive to qualify for the ballot, as previously reported by USA Today. David Blair, the firm’s president, was a the national director of Youth for Trump during the 2016 campaign and was a spokesman in the Trump administration. Blair declined to comment.
Mark Jacoby, whose signature gathering firm Let the Voters Decide often works for Republicans, was involved in the failed Arizona push to get West on the ballot. The California operative has was convicted in 2009 of voter registration fraud, court records show. Jacoby did not respond to a message left at a phone number listed to him.
Medelius, the North Carolina co-chairman of West’s “Justice for All Party,” said the partisan battles over third-party candidates amounted to a “gang war.”
“If they want to use us for cannon fodder, there’s not much I can do about it,” he said.
___
Associated Press writers Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix, Farnoush Amiri in Chicago and Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.
FILE - Scholar and activist Cornel West speaks on July 15, 2023, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)
With most states reliably red or blue, the path to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency runs through seven states where the contest is expected to be narrowly decided.
Those are: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. All together, they are home to only 18.3% of the country’s population.
The Associated Press has been tracking the campaign appearances of the Democratic and Republican tickets since March.
Since then, Pennsylvania has been getting the most love from both campaigns, with a total of 21 visits, including one planned this coming weekend. Wisconsin and Michigan are close behind with 17 and 16, respectively.
Most states haven’t been visited at all, and a handful with clusters of wealth, such as California, get attention not for their voters but when the campaigns want to tap the wallets of the rich.
This combination of photos shows Vice President Kamala Harris, left, on Aug. 7, 2024 and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump on July 31, 2024. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
Like everyone else who is eligible to vote, young people matter in politics. But the difference between young people and everyone else is that they turn out to vote in much lower numbers.
That’s true for almost every generation of young Americans. But that doesn’t mean politicians don’t try to get them to the polls anyway.
Kamala Harris’ campaign is working hard to get young people to vote in higher numbers during this presidential election. That’s why Florida Congressman Maxwell Frost and Detroit City Council President Mary Sheffield are meeting with voters at a Detroit Cafe on Friday.
To talk more about local efforts to turn out young people for Harris, and how young Detroiters feel about the Democratic presidential ticket, BridgeDetroit reporter Malachi Barrett joined The Metro.
Use the media player above to listen to the interview with Barrett.
More headlines from The Metro on Aug. 30, 2024:
Detroit Documenter Meghan Rutigliano and Coordinator Noah Kincade joined the show to give us a better sense of Detroit’s Board of Zoning Appeals and its member training session that took place on Aug. 26.
The Carbon Athletic Club is one of those places in Detroit that makes you wish the walls could talk. The members-only club has nearly 80 years of history. WDET’s Jack Filbrandt bellied up to the bar with Club President MaryBeth Beaudry to discuss the history they’re preserving and the service they provide the community today.
A collective of social justice organizations have teamed up to create a space for art and justice to thrive in Detroit. Kwaku Osei, executive director of the LOVE Building, joined the show to discuss its mission.
Listen to The Metro weekdays from 11 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand.
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Helping a pregnant minor travel to get a legal abortion without parental consent is now a crime in at least two Republican-led states, prompting legal action by abortion-rights advocates and copycat legislation from conservative lawmakers in a handful of other states.
Last year, Idaho became the first state to outlaw “abortion trafficking,” which it defined as “recruiting, harboring or transporting” a pregnant minor to get an abortion or abortion medication without parental permission. In May, Tennessee enacted a similar law. And Republican lawmakers in Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma introduced abortion trafficking bills during their most recent legislative sessions, although those bills failed to advance before the sessions ended.
Those five states are among the 14 that enacted strict abortion bans following the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2022 Dobbs decision, which dismantled the federal right to abortion. Now, conservative state lawmakers are pushing additional measures to try to restrict their residents from getting them in states where it remains legal.
“A lot of folks thought Dobbs was the floor and it’s really not,” said Tennessee state Rep. Aftyn Behn, a Nashville Democrat who’s challenging Tennessee’s trafficking law in court. “[Anti-abortion lawmakers] are coming for state travel and the ability to even talk about abortion.”
Proponents of the laws argue they’re needed to protect parental rights and to prevent other adults from persuading adolescents to get abortions.
“This is a parental rights piece of legislation,” Idaho Republican state Rep. Barbara Ehardt told Stateline. “We can’t control someone getting an abortion in Oregon. But you cannot take a child to get an abortion without the parent’s knowledge because, at least in the past, we would have called that kidnapping.”
But critics warn that abortion trafficking laws could have grave implications not only for interstate travel, but also for personal speech and communication between friends, or between children and adults they trust.
“If courts go down this road, it could change the scope of the First Amendment,” Mary Ziegler, a legal historian and law professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law, told Stateline. “It could have an effect on what else qualifies as crime-facilitating speech, and that could limit the kinds of things people can say and do online and in other contexts.”
Opponents also question whether states should be permitted to interfere in the business of other states. Criminalizing travel within an abortion-ban state to reach another state for a legal abortion would “allow prosecutors to project power across state lines,” said Ziegler.
“We haven’t seen states try to interfere in what’s happening in other states in quite the same way in a long time,” she said. “That’s why there is legal uncertainty — because we’re not talking about something where we have a lot of legal precedent.”
‘Parental rights’
Tennessee state Rep. Jason Zachary, a Knoxville Republican, defended Tennessee’s legislation as “a parental rights bill” that “reinforces a parent’s right to do what’s best for their child,” in remarks he made to the Tennessee General Assembly before the bill passed. Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed it into law in May.
The following month, Behn joined with Nashville attorney and longtime abortion access activist Rachel Welty to file a lawsuit challenging the new law.
Behn and Welty sued nearly a dozen district attorneys in Tennessee, alleging they ignored Welty’s requests to define what behavior would be deemed illegal under the new law. The Tennessee law says that abortion trafficking occurs when an adult “intentionally recruits, harbors, or transports” a pregnant minor within the state to get an abortion or an abortion-inducing drug without parental consent, “regardless of where the abortion is to be procured.”
A hearing to determine whether the court will grant a temporary injunction blocking the Tennessee law, which is currently in effect, is scheduled for Aug. 30.
After Idaho passed its law in April 2023, two advocacy groups and an attorney who works with sexual assault victims sued the state attorney general. The plaintiffs claim Idaho’s law is vague and violates the First Amendment right to free speech, as well as the right to travel freely between states. The right to interstate travel isn’t spelled out in the U.S. Constitution but it’s implied, legal experts say. The Idaho law directly applies to travel within the state, but it also notes that defendants are not immune from liability if “the abortion provider or the abortion-inducing drug provider is located in another state.”
Megan Kovacs, a board member with the Northwest Abortion Access Fund, which is a plaintiff in the case along with the Indigenous Idaho Alliance, said it is “so clearly unconstitutional to disallow people from accessing health care from within or outside their state.” Kovacs added that her group also wants to protect its volunteers from legal liability.
Neither the Idaho nor the Tennessee law exempts minors who become pregnant after being raped by a parent.
“If that person had to go to a parent who didn’t believe them or wanted to defend that family member who was the abuser, that only impedes healing even more,” said Kovacs, who has spent a decade working with survivors of domestic and sexual violence.
Ehardt, who sponsored the Idaho bill, said any adult who is told by a child about an incident of incest should call authorities rather than helping the minor obtain an abortion without parental consent.
“You have to call the police and they will be the ones to help protect the child’s safety,” she said.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held a hearing in May in Seattle, and Kovacs said she expects to learn in the next few weeks whether the court will uphold the temporary injunction blocking Idaho’s law while the lawsuit rolls on.
In July 2023, a group of health care providers sued Alabama Republican Attorney General Steve Marshall and district attorneys, asking the court to prevent the state from prosecuting people who help Alabamians travel to get abortion care in states where it’s legal.
The providers filed the lawsuit in response to remarks that Marshall made on a radio show in 2022, when he suggested that some people who aid a pregnant person in planning or traveling to get an abortion in another state could be prosecuted under the state’s criminal conspiracy laws. A judge denied Marshall’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit earlier this year, and the case is ongoing.
A coordinated effort
The Tennessee and Idaho laws mirror language in model legislation that was published in 2022 by the National Right to Life Committee, which bills itself as the nation’s oldest and largest grassroots pro-life organization.
“With this model law, we [are] laying out a roadmap for the right-to-life movement so that, in a post-Roe society, we can protect many mothers and their children from the tragedy of abortion,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life Committee, in a June 2022 statement introducing the model anti-abortion law.
Anti-abortion-rights organizations, like other interest groups, have long coordinated strategies to promote their preferred legislation to state and federal lawmakers.
The Idaho and Tennessee laws focus specifically on minors, even though they comprise a small fraction of people who get abortions. Those under 19 accounted for 8.1% of abortions, and those under age 15 accounted for just 0.2% of abortions in 2021, the most recent year for which the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has published data.
Kovacs and Ziegler say the bills zero in on minors’ access to abortion because policies that regulate children and teens tend to be more politically acceptable than broader restrictions that affect adults. Such bills also tend to be more likely to survive legal challenges in court.
A chilling effect
Nobody in Tennessee or Idaho has yet been prosecuted under the abortion trafficking laws, but an Idaho woman and her son were charged with kidnapping last fall for allegedly taking the son’s girlfriend, a minor, out of state to get an abortion.
One main goal of a law such as Tennessee’s, Behn believes, is to create a chilling effect so that average people are scared to help anyone who might need an abortion, for fear of breaking the law.
“These bills create an environment of suspicion, fear and misinformation,” said Behn. “But I do think we will see more aggressive district attorneys start to prosecute these cases. [The law] widens the permission structure to start prosecuting people.”
Laws criminalizing abortion travel and imposing other abortion restrictions may be designed to provoke a legal challenge, Ziegler said. With a 6-3 conservative majority, the U.S. Supreme Court might be inclined to support them.
Abortion-rights advocates argue that restrictive abortion laws end up harming even those people who live in states where abortion is still legal.
Oregon, for example, has some of the strongest abortion protection laws in the nation. And yet the strict abortion ban next door in Idaho has made it more difficult for Oregonians to access care, said Kovacs, who lives in Oregon.
Before Idaho’s ban, many people in Eastern Oregon traveled to Idaho for abortion care, she said, because its clinics were closer than Oregon’s clinics, most of which are concentrated on the western side of the state. Last year, in response to increasing abortion restrictions in other states, Oregon passed a sweeping health care omnibus bill that strengthens protections for abortion providers and explicitly allows minors to seek abortions without parental consent. It was signed into law and took effect in January.
Ziegler said it’s not hard to imagine that if abortion trafficking laws are upheld in abortion-ban states, at some point prosecutors in those states could file charges against providers in “safe” states for providing abortion help, such as mailing abortion pills.
“I think it’s not intended to just stop with the people who are in the ban states,” Ziegler said.
A sign taped to a hanger hangs near the Idaho Capitol in Boise after protests against the state’s new abortion laws, which effectively banned the procedure. (Sarah A. Miller/Idaho Statesman/TNS)
Supporters of increasing the state’s minimum wage and earned sick leave received a ruling from the Michigan Supreme Court on Wednesday that’s in their favor. This week on MichMash, host Cheyna Roth and Gongwer News Service’s Alethia Kasben sat down with Crain’s Detroit Business senior reporter Dave Eggert to discuss the ramifications of the ruling on the state’s businesses.
The origins of the adopt and amend legislative tactic
The future of minimum wages in Michigan
Michigan businesses’ reaction to the increase in minimum wage and earned sick leave
The Michigan Legislature’s controversial “adopt and amend” tactic refers to the legislature adopting a ballot measure before allowing it to go to voters and then amending it significantly during the legislative session.
The Michigan Supreme Court’s 4-3 ruling on Wednesday found that the legislative tactic — used by the Legislature in 2018 to gut a voter-approved ballot initiative to increase the state’s minimum wage — was “unconstitutional” because it circumvented the petition initiative process.
“It was very controversial in the moment. The legislature at the time was controlled by Republicans,” Eggert said. “Ballot initiatives generally are thought to generate extra turnout, particularly on those issues, probably for Democrats; for Republicans and business groups, they feel like the laws were unwieldy.”
The ruling, which will allow for an increase to the state’s minimum wage and tipped minimum wage — as well as an expansion of the state’s earned sick time laws — will have a big impact on local businesses.
Some critics of those changes suggest exemptions for small businesses.
“Do they go and try to go back to exempting all businesses with 50 or fewer employees? That could be a pretty tough lift in the Democratic-led legislature” Eggers said.
The new minimum wage law will take effect in February 2025.
Michigan Republican Congressman John James is working to build support for federal legislation that would offer tax breaks in exchange for donations to groups that offer educational scholarships for K-12 students. Those scholarships could go toward expenses like tutoring or private school tuition.
James said it’s time to re-think the country’s education system.
“The Education Choice for Children Act will empower parents, not bureaucrats, not union bosses, or a system that has cheated and denied millions of children, overwhelmingly minority children, overwhelmingly on the socially economic low end in both rural and urban areas,” James said.
Under the federal proposal, the scholarships would be available to kids in households under 300% area median gross income — a measure of the midpoint of an area’s income distribution.
The plan isn’t far off from proposals floated in Michigan in recent years — though public school advocates point out the state constitution bans public money from funding private education.
Supporters of the scholarship program say it would be different from a voucher program that would directly compensate families for private school tuition.
But critics, like Jennifer Smith, the director of government relations for the Michigan Association of School Boards, disagree.
She criticized the plan as a school voucher program by a different name.
“The idea is the same. They’re trying to shift money from the public tax collections and public money to the private schools. And even though it may be called a tax credit, it’s going to have the same effect,” Smith said.
With only a few months left before the general election and Democrats in control of the U.S. Senate and presidency, it’s unlikely the federal proposal will advance much further this session.
But supporters hope it comes back next year.
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Recent polls show Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris leading former President Donald Trump following the Democratic National Convention. Now, the attention turns to the first and only scheduled debate between the two — set to take place on Sept. 10.
But what other opportunities lie ahead for the two candidates to make an impact on the presidential race?
To discuss this, Washington Post columnist E.J Dionne, political analyst Jessica Taylor, and WDET reporter and All Things Considered host Russ McNamara joined Created Equal on Thursday.
Guests:
Jessica Taylor is the Senate and Governors Editor at Cook Political Report.
Russ McNamara is a reporter and host of All Things Considered at WDET
E.J. Dionne is the Professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University and a columnist for the Washington Post. He says mocking former President Trump is a new strategy for the democrats.
Listen to Created Equal with host Stephen Henderson weekdays from 9-10 a.m. ET on 101.9 WDET and streaming on-demand.
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More than a year after state lawmakers eliminated the five-year waiting requirement for certain immigrants to qualify for Medicaid, the state is now opening coverage for immigrants who are under the age of 21 and pregnant.
The Michigan Legislature allocated $6.4 million from the 2023-2024 general fund to get rid of the five year eligibility waiting period for legal residents joining dozens of other states across the country in providing the benefits.
States have had the option to waive the five-year waiting period since 2009 through the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act.
“There might be people who have maybe previously thought they weren’t eligible for benefits, it might be a good time to go and see if they’re able to sign up, and their local offices should be able to get them signed up if they’re lawfully residing,” said Elinor Jordan, supervising attorney at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center.
According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the coverage extends to lawfully residing children and pregnant women, including green card holders, immigrant survivors of battery or extreme cruelty and their family members, as well as those with temporary protected status.
Public policy experts estimate the expansion could benefit nearly 10,000 people statewide.
“This policy change would bring Michigan closer to covering all children—and providing affordable, quality care to thousands more children in our state—while aligning our state law with that of most other states,” stated Simon Marshall-Shah, policy analyst at the Michigan League for Public Policy, in a 2021 analysis of the policy.
The change also includes postpartum coverage for up to a year for qualifying recipients. Before the expansion, legally residing pregnant individuals were eligible for Medicaid coverage for emergency services, including some prenatal and postnatal care.
Jordan says the move makes coverage much more comprehensive while also preventing medical debt for some people.
“We often work with clients, who are lawful residents and are contributing so much but have this crushing medical debt,” she said. “It can really take away from their productivity and their ability to full engage in their communities.”
WDET strives to make our journalism accessible to everyone. As a public media institution, we maintain our journalistic integrity through independent support from readers like you. If you value WDET as your source of news, music and conversation, please make a gift today.
Wayne County officials met this week to discuss the lack of transparency from the federal government following a unilateral decision to haul radioactive waste from a site in New York where the Manhattan Project was developed, to a metro Detroit landfill.
Officials were not aware of the shipment until the Detroit Free Press reported last week that the waste was being moved to be stored at a landfill in Van Buren Township by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Republic Services’ Wayne Disposal is one of five landfills identified by the corp that can handle the waste.
“When permits and sites are expanded we need to know what can we do as a county commission to have a say in these decisions?” said Wayne County Commission Chair Alisha Bell at Tuesday’s meeting.
Officials voiced similar concerns last year, when a Norfolk Southern train carrying hazardous materials derailed in the city of East Palestine, Ohio, releasing toxic chemicals like the known carcinogen vinyl chloride into the environment.
Nearly 15% of the solid waste and about 7% of the liquid waste removed from that derailment were eventually disposed of in metro Detroit, yet local officials weren’t notified of their transport until the chemicals were already here, The Detroit News reported.
Just a few weeks after the East Palestine derailment, a Norfolk Southern train derailed in Van Buren Township. While there was no evidence of that derailment resulting in the exposure of hazardous materials, it only added to intensifying concerns in Michigan about the transportation of hazardous waste to disposal sites in the state.
Those concerns where echoed on Tuesday by both residents and local officials in attendance. However, Patrick Cullen of Wayne County’s environmental services department said the decision was made by the federal government — not the county — and cannot be blocked.
U.S. Reps. Rashida Talib and Debbie Dingell were both present at the meeting and expressed concerns about the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) not having higher restrictions on what materials can be transported in.
“When’s the last time they denied a permit? I want to know that.” Talib said. “Because every permit I’ve seen come forward to the state seems to get approved or delayed because they need more information.”
Bell suggested the commission could take action to help make the county more unattractive for companies looking to store waste by establishing protocols and enforcing them with fines, increasing tipping fees, and tracking permits of these companies.
In a letter to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Republic Services, Dingell reiterated that the lack of notice to local officials and the public about the hazardous waste shipment only heightened anxiety about the potential risks associated with transporting those materials through local communities.
“While I understand this facility is licensed at both the federal- and state-level and must adhere to strict regulations that ensure the community is protected, my constituents remain concerned about the impact on their health and environment,” the letter read. “Given the recent history of hazardous waste disposal incidents in Michigan, it is imperative that we take every precaution to protect our community.”
A representative from EGLE was present at the meeting via Zoom, but technical difficulties prevented them from providing a clear response.
A town hall is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, Sept. 4 with the county and local officials to further discuss the transport.
WDET’s Jenny Sherman contributed to this report.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Special counsel Jack Smith filed a new indictment Tuesday against Donald Trump over his efforts to undo the 2020 presidential election that keeps the same criminal charges but narrows the allegations against him following a Supreme Court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents.
The new indictment removes a section of the indictment that had accused Trump of trying to use the law enforcement powers of the Justice Department to overturn his election loss, an area of conduct for which the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 opinion last month, said that Trump was absolutely immune from prosecution.
The stripped-down criminal case represents a first effort by prosecutors to comply with a Supreme Court opinion that made all but certain the Republican presidential nominee won’t face trial before the November election in the case alleging he tried to thwart the peaceful transfer of power.
It comes days before prosecutors and defense lawyers are expected to tell the judge overseeing the case how they want to proceed in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling, which said presidents are presumptively immune from prosecution for official White House acts. The high court sent the case back to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who now must analyze which allegations in the indictment were unofficial actions — or those taken in Trump’s private capacity — that can proceed to trial.
In a statement on his Truth Social platform, Trump called the new indictment “an act of desperation” and an “effort to resurrect a ‘dead’ Witch Hunt.’” He said the new case has “all the problems of the old Indictment, and should be dismissed IMMEDIATELY. ”
The special counsel’s office said the updated indictment, filed in federal court in Washington, was issued by a grand jury that had not previously heard evidence in the case. It said in a statement that the indictment “reflects the Government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings and remand instructions.”
The new indictment does away with references to allegations that could be deemed as official acts for which Trump is entitled to immunity in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling. That includes allegations that Trump tried to enlist the Justice Department in his failed effort to undo his election loss, including by conducting sham investigations and telling states — incorrectly — that significant fraud had been detected.
In its opinion, the Supreme Court held that a president’s interactions with the Justice Department constitute official acts for which he is entitled to immunity.
The original indictment detailed how Jeffrey Clark, a top official in the Trump Justice Department, wanted to send a letter to elected officials in certain states falsely claiming that the department had “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election,” but top department officials refused.
Clark’s support for Trump’s election fraud claims led Trump to openly contemplate naming him as acting attorney general in place of Jeffrey Rosen, who led the department in the final weeks of the Trump administration. Trump ultimately relented in that idea “when he was told it would result in mass resignations at the Justice Department,” according to the original indictment. Rosen remained on as acting attorney general through the end of Trump’s tenure.
The new case no longer references Clark as a co-conspirator. Trump’s alleged co-conspirators were not named in either indictment, but the details make clear their identities. The new indictment stresses that none of the other co-conspirators “were government officials during the conspiracies and all of whom were acting in a private capacity.”
The new indictment also removes references to Trump’s communications with federal government officials — like senior White House attorneys — who told him there was no evidence of fraud that would change the outcome of the 2020 election. It also removes references to certain Trump statements, including a claim he made during a White House press conference two days after the election about a suspicious dump of votes in Detroit.
The new indictment still includes one of the more stunning allegations brought by Smith — that Trump participated in a scheme orchestrated by allies to enlist slates of fraudulent electors in battleground states won by Democrat Joe Biden who would falsely attest that Trump had won in those states.
It also retains allegations that Trump sought to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to reject legitimate electoral votes, and that Trump and his allies exploited the chaos at the Capitol on Jan. 6 in an attempt to further delay the certification of Biden’s victory.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote in his majority opinion that the interactions between Trump and Pence amounted to official conduct for which “Trump is at least presumptively immune from prosecution.”
The question, Roberts wrote, is whether the government can rebut “that presumption of immunity.”
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the ruling. In an excerpt from an interview with CBS News’ “Sunday Morning” that aired Tuesday, she said: “I was concerned about a system that appeared to provide immunity for one individual under one set of circumstances. When we have a criminal justice system that had ordinarily treated everyone the same.”
Story by Eric Tucker and Alanna Durkin Richer, Associated Press. Associated Press writers Mark Sherman, Lindsay Whitehurst and Maya Sweedler contributed to this report.
There likely was no busier man at last week’s Democratic National Convention than transplanted Michigander Pete Buttigieg.
The U.S. transportation secretary stresses he’s using his personal time to campaign for the Harris-Walz ticket — and he seemed to be the go-to spokesperson for the media.
Buttigieg, who was on the list of potential Harris running mates, is viewed by some pundits as a possible gubernatorial candidate when Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is term-limited out after 2026.
But Buttigieg says he’s focusing now on helping Democrats maintain the enthusiasm shown at the convention all the way through to Election Day.
Listen: Buttigieg says Dems will ‘bottle’ energy from DNC to propel presidential ticket
The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Pete Buttigieg: We’ve got many, long weeks ahead. But what we’re going to do is we’re going to take the joy and the positive energy [from the convention], we’re going to bottle it up and we’re going to use it to propel us through the weeks ahead. Of course, on every campaign there are curveballs, there are setbacks. Although I do think it is notable that in the many weeks since Kamala Harris became our candidate, she hasn’t put a foot wrong. People kept saying, “Is this the honeymoon? You know, this is a few days, then it gets real.” The energy has been sustained. The momentum has been sustained. But as she keeps reminding us, we still need to remember that this is an underdog effort.
Quinn Klinefelter, WDET News: Any concerns about the protests regarding Israel and Gaza at the convention and whether or not that could actually have a significant impact on the campaign going forward?
PB: That’s one more point of difference between us and the Trump-Vance ticket. Not just the approach she has, to bringing peace to the Middle East, but also the approach she’s bringing to engaging protesters and demonstrators. She’s reaching out to those parts of our party that are so concerned. Versus this idea you hear from Trump about basically turning the military on protesters. We understand the legitimate concerns of those who have spoken out and will continue to engage.
QK: When you talk to voters about what their number one issue is, there still seems to be a lot of worries about the economy. You obviously have a big background in the Midwest, as well as with issues like infrastructure and so on. What do you see that a Harris administration could do that a Trump administration would not, in terms of trying to help lower prices, etc?
PB: The biggest concern in the economy is around prices. And economists who have analyzed the Trump plan believe it will add $3,900 a year to a family’s expenses, because he wants to add all these additional charges (tariffs) on imported goods. You contrast that with the Harris plan that’s very focused on lowering costs. Also, if we want to talk about economic performance, let’s talk about jobs. There was a manufacturing recession under Trump, and that’s even before COVID. Right now, there’s a manufacturing boom the likes of which we haven’t seen in decades. A construction boom as well, because the infrastructure policies that Trump failed to deliver, this administration has. These are the kinds of things that are explaining why you’ve had in these last few years the most job creation in any presidency in history. Now we’ve got to pair that with continued work to drive prices and inflation back to baseline. And that’s exactly what you’re seeing right now.
QK: How do you make voters feel that? I hear people recite the data and then people say, “Well, I’m not really feeling that in my own house.”
PB: We got to meet folks where they are. This is a real concern, you can’t wave it away. That’s exactly why Harris is being criticized now for being too aggressive in trying to bring prices down. But I think that’s the right kind of focus that demonstrates concern for what voters are feeling. We also, though, need to make sure that there’s no attempt to rewrite history and have people forget about the manufacturing recession and other problems that happened during the Trump years.
QK: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer campaigned on “fixing the damn roads.” You’ve been a Michigan resident for a while now. She is term limited out after 2026. Would you think about running for governor yourself?
PB: I sincerely am not sure what the future holds for me. I’ve got the best job right now and, of course, I’m not speaking in that capacity. But I also am having the best time when I’m not at my day job, campaigning for a ticket and a party that I really believe in. Between the two, those things are taking about 120% of my capacity.
QK: Are you really having the best time? It’s so politically divided now it seems like it would just be hell at times to deal with from the inside.
PB: Well, look, it’s hard work, but it’s hard work that’s worth doing. I believe in politics as a force that, if you understand it in the right way, can make our lives better. As I shared with the convention audience, I recognize the fact that the simple existence of my family — just what goes on at our dinner table — is only possible because of political involvement, political courage and political action that brought about things like marriage equality. Whatever the biggest issue is that’s affecting somebody’s life, chances are it either gets better or worse depending on the political choices we make. Of course it’s hard. But that doesn’t mean it has to be a death match. And part of why I think Americans are ready to change the channel away from the Trump show, part of why folks are just more and more tired of that, is that most Americans don’t view the political process as something that has to be all about negativity and grievance and revenge. It can be a process of engaging our neighbors, and of course it’ll be tough sometimes, but it can also be really uplifting.
It’s really great speaking to the Michigan audience, in particular, because that’s where the infrastructure and the manufacturing results of the Biden-Harris vision are not just playing out, but very much at stake. The job creation and the clean energy economy that’s bringing back so many blue collar jobs in the industrial Midwest, that will either be developed or it will be destroyed, depending on who the next administration is led by. I want to make sure it’s developed so we create even more jobs.
Use the media player above to listen to the interview with U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.
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“Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign reached out to the Michigan Bureau of Elections late this afternoon in an attempt to withdraw his name,” said bureau spokesperson Cheri Hardmon, adding that the campaign was informed the deadline to remove his name from the ballot had passed.
Kennedy is on the state ballot as the nominee of the Natural Law Party of Michigan. That party’s state nominating convention was held back in April.
Hardmon said the party could have held a new nominating convention any time until the state’s August presidential primary.
“The Natural Law Party held their convention to select electors for Robert Kennedy Jr.,” she said. “They cannot meet at this point to select new electors since it’s past the primary.”
Kennedy’s quixotic campaign sought the Natural Law Party of Michigan nomination because it was easier and less expensive than gathering thousands of signatures required to get on the state ballot as an unaffiliated independent candidate.
Now, Kennedy said, he wants to be removed from the ballot in states where his candidacy could hurt Trump’s chances. Michigan is considered a swing state, and recent polls show Trump in a close race with Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris.
The Natural Law Party seeks to apply the principles of transcendental meditation to government. Kennedy has no prior affiliation with the party or the transcendental meditation movement. The advantage of a big name for a minor party is the likelihood of winning enough votes to automatically qualify for ballot access in future elections.
The Natural Law Party of Michigan and the Kennedy campaign did not respond to messages seeking comment.
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PORT AUSTIN, Mich. — Deep in the thumb of Michigan’s mitten-shaped Lower Peninsula, Republican election officials are outcasts in their rural communities.
Michigan cities already were familiar with the consequences of election conspiracy theories. In 2020, Republicans flooded Detroit’s ballot counting center looking for fraud. Democratic and Republican election officials faced an onslaught of threats. And conservative activists attempted to tamper with election equipment.
But the clerks who serve tiny conservative townships around Lake Huron never thought the hatred would be directed toward them.
“I’m telling you — I’ve heard about everything I could hear,” said Theresa Mazure, the clerk for the 700 residents of Hume Township in Huron County. “I just shake my head. And when you try to explain, all I hear is, ‘Well, that’s just the Democrats talking.’ No, it’s the democratic process.”
The misinformation is rampant, she said. Voters mistakenly believe election equipment is connected to the internet, or that voters are receiving multiple ballots in the mail, or that officials are stuffing ballot tabulators with fake ballots at the end of the day.
She knows her voters. They’re her neighbors. But the level of distrust of elections has gotten to a point where they won’t listen to her anymore. The fact that she’s a Republican doesn’t matter — only that she’s the clerk.
Sitting in the Hume Township Hall, about three hours north of Detroit and surrounded by miles of flat cornfields, Mazure leaned on agricultural metaphors to describe the scenario.
“The mistrust was there, the seed was planted, and then it was fertilized and grew,” she said. “I’m very angry about this, because we’re honest people. All we’re trying to do is our job.”
Mazure didn’t feel comfortable talking about politics. But former President Donald Trump, who lost this state four years ago by 154,000 votes, planted the seed of election denialism and helped it grow.
Robert Vinande, the Republican clerk for Flynn Township, Michigan, stands behind a drop box he put outside his home, where he runs local elections. Vinande and other township clerks have had to correct a flood of election misinformation. (Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline/TNS)
Once again, Michigan is one of the handful of states that could decide who wins the presidency, and the pressure on the people who run elections is enormous. The state’s part-time clerks, who are trained every four years and have limited resources in running elections, are at a breaking point.
“I’m concerned about November,” Mazure said. “People think we’re the enemy. What do we do? How do we combat this?”
‘I was scared’
Irvin Kanaski succeeded his father as Lincoln Township clerk, first serving as a deputy and then winning election to the top job in 1988, after his father had moved into a nursing home.
For much of his tenure as clerk, Kanaski was a full-time farmer, growing corn, beans and wheat. He’s now retired from farming, but still digs graves at the local cemetery. He has served this community of roughly 600 voters for nearly 40 years, but he feels like they’ve turned against him.
“I feel accused of this fraud stuff that’s been thrown around,” said Kanaski, his hands clasped in his lap. “And I just — I take offense to that.”
Throughout the United States, elections are typically administered at the county level, though there are exceptions. In the New England states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont, town clerks run elections. And in Michigan and Wisconsin, municipal and county clerks have varying election duties.
Under Michigan’s hyper-decentralized system, more than 1,500 township and city clerks are responsible for election assignments, such as distributing and collecting mail-in ballots, along with non-election tasks, including maintaining township records, compiling meeting minutes and preparing financial statements.
Michigan township populations range from as low as 15 in Pointe Aux Barques Township in Huron County to a little over 100,000 people in Clinton Charter Township in Macomb County, just north of Detroit. Many of the state’s townships, roughly half of which have populations under 2,000, don’t have websites.
For the small townships with hundreds of voters, the clerk job is part time and pays less than $20,000 a year. When a clerk retires or can no longer do the job, the torch gets passed on to a trusted member of the community — a position almost always sealed with an unopposed election. Ballot drop boxes are sometimes stationed at their homes, where clerks usually conduct their duties.
It’s an old system that doesn’t necessarily consider the financial and professional requirements of running elections in the modern age, said Melinda Billingsley, communications manager for Voters Not Politicians, a Lansing, Michigan-based advocacy group that has successfully pushed against gerrymandered maps and more ways to cast a ballot.
“We need to make sure that clerks are being supported so that they can administer elections effectively,” she said.
During the 2020 presidential election, a voter in Lincoln Township used his own pen to mark a ballot. But it was the wrong kind of pen, and the ink caused the ballot-counting device to malfunction. When Kanaski set the machine aside to be cleaned, the voter was so irate that one of the poll workers, who happened to be a retired police officer, had to escort him out.
“I was scared,” Kanaski said. “You don’t know what they’re going to do.”
This will be Kanaski’s last term in office, but he doesn’t know who in the community would replace him. If no one runs for clerk, the township board appoints someone.
Nearly a tenth of township clerk positions that are up for election this year do not have a candidate, according to a recent article by the Michigan Advance, Stateline’s sibling publication within States Newsroom. The story noted that increased demands and abuse are dampening interest in the job.
Taking a job no one wants
Far from the interstate, down gravel roads lined by corn stalks and Trump signs, Robert Vinande runs Flynn Township’s elections out of his Brown City home, 90 minutes north of Detroit. The red, white and blue township ballot drop box sits in front of one of the three buildings on his property, not far from the driveway.
Robert Vinande, the Republican clerk for Flynn Township, Michigan, shows a sample ballot from the state’s August primary. (Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline/TNS)
Sitting at his kitchen table, as chickadees, finches and jays ate from a bird feeder just outside a nearby window, Vinande said he has not yet faced the level of vitriol seen by neighboring clerks. He took over the position in 2022, and suspects that his predecessor left her role because of that pressure.
A neighbor once asked him if the election was safe. Vinande didn’t hesitate in saying it was. If voters call him concerned about their absentee ballots or any other election process, he will walk them through it, step by step. He always reminds voters that he has a strong, bipartisan team of veteran poll workers who help run local elections.
“Generally, people say, ‘Well, if you’re comfortable, I’m comfortable,’” he said.
Flynn Township residents mostly suspect voting irregularities occurred down in the Detroit area — a classic rural-urban divide, he said. He never suspected any widespread voter fraud in 2020.
“I don’t buy it, knowing the checks and balances that are in place,” he said.
When he retired as internal auditor for Dow Chemical Company, specializing in data analytics at its Midland, Michigan, headquarters, he and his wife moved here, into their vacation cabin. Local leaders who knew him thought he’d be suited for the clerk role. There was nobody rushing to take the job.
He’s not one to go to Florida in the winter, and he likes to stay busy. He suspects he’ll stay in the role for the foreseeable future. When working in his wood-paneled den, he’s just happy to be surrounded by a plethora of presidential souvenirs he’s collected over the years. And when he’s not doing his part-time gig, he’s able to pursue his blacksmithing hobby.
Vinande — whose father ran the one-room school in his rural town in Michigan — said this is his way of giving back to the community. But to continue to do this job, he’s going to have to tell his voters the truth, he added, even if they disagree.
“I just want to dispel some of the myths,” he said.
‘We hunker down’
Around 5 in the afternoon on the Thursday before Michigan’s August primary, Mazure walked into the Hume Township Hall, where she’s led elections since 2008, closing the door quickly behind her to prevent the stifling summer heat from getting into the air-conditioned room.
Four election workers were breaking down election equipment at the end of a day of early voting. Six voting booths dotted the small room — more booths than the four voters who cast a ballot that day. Along the walls were three old maps of the township and black-and-white photos of local men who fought in the Civil War.
“Rip that sucker like a Band-Aid,” she told one of the poll workers, pointing to the tape that printed out of the ballot tabulator with the day’s vote totals.
Mazure used a small key to open the tabulator, snagging the four ballots and confirming the machine’s accuracy. The two observers — a Democrat and a Republican — signed forms validating the numbers. It’s checks and balances, she said.
Many local voters falsely believe that the tabulators that count ballots are connected to the internet, Mazure said. But when she ran her legally required public testing of equipment prior to the election, no one showed up to see that the machines were running properly and not flipping votes.
“How do you educate someone who doesn’t want to be educated?” she asked. “They only want to believe the unbelievable. They want to believe that somebody should have won, and it didn’t happen. So, therefore, it’s fraud.”
When she’s not running local elections out of her home, she’s in her garden, tending to tomatoes and green beans and canning for the winter. She loves polka dancing, refinishing furniture and sewing — a relief from the stresses of her position.
“I’m supposed to be retired,” she laughed.
Mazure is up for reelection in November. She wanted to find a replacement in the community and train them before retiring. She never got that kind of training when she started, and the job was as difficult to navigate as it is to drive in a snowstorm, she said. But she hasn’t found a replacement and doesn’t think she will.
Though she’s worn down by the abuse she never thought possible in elections, she leans on a steadfast resiliency, familiar to Midwesterners who have braved long winters.
“We hunker down,” she said. “We try to do the best job we can, hoping that at some point this stigma will go away. We don’t know if it will.”
Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a national nonprofit news organization focused on state policy.
Lincoln Township Clerk Irvin Kanaski, left, and Hume Township Clerk Theresa Mazure leave an early voting site on Aug. 1, 2024, in Port Austin, Michigan. (Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline/TNS)
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