Since the 2020 election, the messaging around this country’s election integrity has remained consistent.
Democrats and media elites (a redundant way of putting it, I know) continue to say what they’ve always said: That the vast, pandemic-related restructuring of American election protocols in 2020 and beyond was safe and secure and that anyone who questions it — in any way — is a crazed conspiracy theorist.
Well, that narrative took yet another major hit this month when a Michigan judge ruled that one such procedure — implemented in the Wolverine state in December 2023 — is unconstitutional and illegal, according to The Detroit News.
The ruling, handed down by Court of Claims Judge Christopher Yates, blasted guidance from Democratic Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson telling election officials to assume all absentee ballot signatures were authentic.
“Our constitution calls for a signature comparison without making a presumption for or against validity,” Yates wrote in the June 12 ruling, according to The Detroit News.
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“Similarly, the language in Michigan statutes precludes the application of a presumption of validity.”
The issue of absentee ballots and their authenticity was one of the biggest voter fraud claims when it came to the 2020 election.
The so-called crazed conspiracy theorists on the right were concerned that newly implemented lax procedures similar to this post-election rule opened up the voting system to all sorts of vulnerabilities, and that any changes needed to be thought through in accordance with existing laws.
Now, it’s not the conspiracy theorists saying that. It’s a sitting appeals court judge.
Do you expect Democrats to cheat in the November election?
This ruling wasn’t merely an example of a partisan maneuver, mind you.
Yates is by no means a right-wing stalwart — the judge was appointed to the 3rd District Court of Appeals by none other than far-left Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
Michigan Republicans have been fighting Benson and her unconstitutional election procedures for more than three years now.
Though some Republicans across the country leave much to be desired when it comes to their work with election integrity, those in Michigan certainly deserve credit for their hard work.
As reported by The Detroit News, this is the second dispute over election procedures that fell conservatives’ way.
In March 2021, another judge on the Court of Claims, a statewide court that handles claims against the state government, determined that Benson’s previous guidance guidance on signature verification — a guidance that was in place for the 2020 election — had not gone through the “proper rulemaking procedures,” the newspaper reported at the time.
According to The Detroit News, Republicans celebrated the win then, but “noted it came too late to make a difference in the November election.”
It’s certainly encouraging to see Republicans taking these things seriously — and getting election procedure disputes resolved — ahead of this year’s presidential election.
“Michigan is crucial to the pathway to victory in November,” Michigan Republican Party Chairman Pete Hoekstra said, according to The Detroit News.
“We must protect and enforce all our election laws to maintain confidence in our system.”
As the New York Post noted last week, similar legal battles over 2020 election procedures are currently going on in several other states.
Should more continue to fall Republicans’ way, an already obvious fact will continue to become even more undeniable.
Questioning the current state of election security does not make anyone a crazed conspiracy theorist.
