Kathleen Gray

Detroit Free Press Lansing Bureau

Stricter voter identification laws were described Wednesday night as both a way to ensure the integrity of elections is upheld and a means to erect barriers for vulnerable and minority voters.

But in the end, Republicans who sponsored and supported the bills making voter identification laws more stringent won the day, approving the main bill in the package on mostly party line votes of 57-50. Five Republicans joined all the Democrats in opposing the bill.

“This protects the integrity of every legal citizens’ right to vote and to make sure the fraudulent votes aren’t cast,” said state Rep. Gary Glenn, R-Midland. “It seems to be a commonsense requirement.”

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State Rep. Lisa Lyons, R-Alto, the sponsor of the bill, said in every day life, people have to show their identification for the simplest of tasks and they should do the same for voting.

"This legislation is simple: In order to have your vote count, you have to prove that you are who you say you are," she said. "The legislation preserves the integrity of our elections and will deter and detect fraud."

Democrats, though, said the bill will disenfranchise minorities, disabled and homeless people and other vulnerable citizens, who will most likely be unable to vote if the law passes.

“This is going to cause confusion. There are going to be arguments and long lines are going to get even longer, but I guess that’s the point,” said state Rep. Jeff Irwin, D-Ann Arbor. “If we pass this bill and sign it into law, there will be properly registered voters expecting to vote who will not be able to.”

He noted that of the more than 18,000 people who voted without photo identification in November, 39% lived in Wayne County, including 30% of Detroit residents.

“The practical effect of these bills are obvious,” Irwin said.

Under the bills, legally registered voters who forget their photo identification when they go to vote would have to use a provisional ballot. Those ballots would be held aside and not counted until the person goes to their local clerk’s office with their photo identification and proves they are who they say they are. They would have 10 days after an election to provide such proof.

Now, a voter who forgets identification has to sign an affidavit that they are who they say they are, but if they show up on voting lists at their precincts, their votes are counted that day. The new law would add the wrinkle of having to provide photo ID to clerks within 10 days and the prospect that the vote would ultimately not be counted. More than 18,000 people across the state voted on Nov. 8 without showing a photo ID, but signing an affidavit of identity.

Lyons, a term-limited state representative who won election Nov. 8 as the next Kent County Clerk, said she believes the integrity of elections needs to be strengthened, even though there have been only a handful of voter fraud cases brought in Michigan in the last several decades, according to the Secretary of State.

Democrats offered dozens of amendments trying to make it easier for people to use different forms of identification, tie-barring the bill to a variety of other voting rights-related bills and doing a study on whether the bill would have a discriminatory effect on vulnerable and minority voters. All the amendments failed.

The three amendments that did pass — and all were offered by Republicans — were an $11-million appropriation across the three bills to provide for education for clerks' offices, funds for the free state identifications and also makes the bill immune from a voter referendum or repeal.

Two other bills would waive the fees for birth certificates that are needed to get identification and for the actual pieces of identification for poor people. The bills are modeled after similar legislation in Indiana.

Republican Rep. Ed McBroom of Vulcan said he doesn’t think the bill is meant to ensure that certain people don’t vote, but he also has problems with the bill, especially in areas like the Upper Peninsula, where clerks don’t have regular office hours and a trip to those offices is often a 100-mile round trip.

“I have voted at times by filling out an affidavit because I forgot my driver’s license,” he said. “And now I’m going to be told that I have got to find time when my clerk’s at the office because she’s not in the office on most days.”

And state Rep. Fred Durhal, D-Detroit, said it was a sad day, especially for minorities who fought and sometimes died for the right to vote.

“Fifty-one years after the Voting Rights Act passed, we’re still trying to protect the right to vote,” he said. “This is the same type of legislation laws that were used back in the day to prevent people from the right to vote. This bill is discrimination, masked as a means to bolster our security.”

The bills — HB 6066-6068 — now move to the Senate for consideration.

Contact Kathleen Gray: 313-223-4430 or kgray99@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @michpoligal.