Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson Goes Rogue

This week, Michigan’s Secretary of State is defending a lawsuit that accuses Ruth Johnson of illegally put a question on all of Michigan’s voter applications and absentee voter applications that asks whether you are a citizen of the United States of America.

Voter registration forms in Michigan already ask whether the person registering to vote is a citizen or not.  http://www.michigan.gov/documents/MIVoterRegistration_97046_7.pdf.  It is the first question the form asks.  

As a citizen of the United States of America and the state of Michigan, and an elected official of the state of Michigan Ruth Johnson should be obeying the laws of the state, but instead she has chosen to break the law and defy Governor Snyder’s veto of the law that would have allowed her to place this question on voter applications.  She has defied the governor not once, but three times on this issue.  This illegal question was on the Republican primary voter applications in February, again in the August primary and her plan is to have the question on voter applications for the November general election. 

This is nothing more than Ruth Johnson having a temper tantrum like a two-year old.  Ruth is just mad that the governor vetoed the bills that she introduced that would have made Michigan one of if not the most difficult state for poor people, the elderly, African Americans and students to vote.  Oh, and by the way, if you didn’t notice most of those demographic groups tend to vote for Democratic candidates.

There has been a scheme being perpetrated on America’s democracy for years to try to limit the people that can vote in this country, a country that says it values its democracy and wants everyone to vote.  That’s just not true.  People like Ruth Johnson don’t want everyone to vote who is qualified.

Paul Weyrich, “father “ of the right wing movement, famously said in 1980,  ” I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

Ruth Johnson is trying willing to break the law to fulfill Weyrich’s edict of keeping people from voting in the state of Michigan and she needs to be held accountable for her actions by the voters of the state of Michigan when she runs for re-election in 2014.  We need a new Secretary of State in Michigan, one who will follow the law and not impose her own views on the voters in the state of Michigan.