MI AG Dana Nessel has gone out of her way to try to convince Michigan citizens that she’s advocating for transparency in our elections. Unfortunately, Dana Nessel has a long way to go if she actually wants anyone to believe she cares about anything other than punishing her political enemies.
On September 6, the Gateway Pundit reported on the alarming loopholes in the UOCAVA registration process that could lead to an untold number of illegitimate votes from overseas entering our elections.
In the 2000 presidential election, a mere 629 votes separated the race between George W. Bush and Al Gore in Florida. When the absentee overseas votes finally arrived, George W. Bush was able to take the 537-vote lead from Al Gore and win the presidency.
Democrats paid attention.
We asked: Are Democrats really interested in attracting more overseas voters, or could the flawed voter registration system they use be a game-changer in our upcoming election if properly utilized by unscrupulous election officials?
On August 12, 2024, the DNC released a memo announcing it would spend six figures to collect up to 9 million Democratic votes from overseas.
The DNC’s memo clearly stated its goal:
For the first time ever in a Presidential cycle, the DNC is investing in Democrats Abroad.
The DNC is doing the work to win in battleground states across the country.
With under 100 days until Election Day and ahead of the Democratic National Convention, the DNC announced a significant six-figure investment in Democrats VoteFromAbroad, for the first time ever in a Presidential cycle, helping fund their efforts to win the votes of approximately 9,000,000 Americans– of which only about 8% are registered voters from 2020 – who are living or serving outside of the United States.
Here’s the problem with the DNC’s stated goal:
The DNC’s stated goal of winning the votes of approximately 9 million Americans through its Democrats Abroad website seems impossible, given that according to a recent report by the federal government FVAP website, only 4.4 million US citizens reside overseas, and only 2.8 million of those are of voting age.
Reuters recently wrote about the DNC’s plan to spend $300,000 to register “9 million” UOCAVA voters leading up to the 2024 election. According to the government website FVAP, there are only 2.8 million eligible UOCAVA voters. Let’s assume that half of those eligible voters would vote Democrat (a generous assumption given the state of the US economy); that’s only 1.4 million eligible voters in the 2024 election. The 1.4 million number doesn’t account for how they would vote or even if they would vote, given that a meager number of eligible overseas voters actually vote.
Curiously, the DNC memo claims that “over 1.6 million Americans from the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin” live overseas, adding that they plan to “fight for every vote.”
They share the chart with their UOCAVA population estimates for each battleground state.
The total number of swing state voters in the Democrat chart comes out to 1,625,136 voters.
The US government’s FVAP website claims there are 2.8 million eligible overseas US voters.
Democrats actually expect Americans to believe that over half of all eligible overseas voters have residence in the crucial swing states! That is absurd!
The DNC memo reminds everyone of how close the 2020 election results were and why they’re not going to leave anything to chance in 2024:
In 2020, just 44,000 votes across Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin votes won Joe Biden the presidency. In fact, abroad voters made a notable difference in Georgia and Arizona during the 2020 presidential election and made the difference in close races in Connecticut, New Hampshire, and North Carolina during the 2022 midterms. That’s why the DNC is doing the work to win this election by reaching out to voters regardless of where they live.
Note: It’s so much easier to register UOCAVA voters than voters who plan to vote in the USA.
This is the perfect solution for a party looking to bulk up the voter rolls with potentially non-existent voters in advance of the 2024 election.
The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) allows online voter registrations without verification of identity or citizenship status.
US Citizens in the USA who would like to register to vote must share the last four digits of their social security number and/or provide a driver’s license or state-issued ID.
UOCAVA voters, however, can bypass the requirement to share the last four digits of their social security number and/or provide a driver’s license or state-issued ID.
The screenshot below shows how the Democrat Party website, much like the federal government’s website, registers UOCAVA voters to vote in US elections and allows the user to bypass the ID portion of the online registration process.
UOCAVA opens the door to unlimited foreign voter voting.
Here are a few additional details about UOCAVA voters who register to vote on the FAVP or Federal Voting Assistance Program application (a federal government website) or the Democrat-funded website VoteFromAbroad.org:
– Applicants may choose any state or address they wish to vote in.
– No one verifies that these registrants ever lived at the address they list or that they have any connection to that state.
On October 9, the MIGOP and the RNC filed a lawsuit in the MI Court of Claims against Michigan SOS Jocelyn Benson and MI Bureau of Elections Director Jonathan Brater to challenge the constitutionality of Michigan SOS Jocelyn Benson’s guidance, which allows overseas or UOCAVA voters who have never resided in Michigan to register to vote in Michigan.
The lawsuit simply states that, according to our constitution, ONLY Michigan residents can vote in our elections:
The Michigan Constitution allows Michigan residents—and only Michigan residents—to vote. See Const. 1963, art. 2, § 1 (“Every citizen of the United States who has attained the age of 21 years, who has resided in this state six months, and who meets the requirements of local residence provided by law, shall be an elector and qualified to vote in any election except as otherwise provided in this constitution. The legislature shall define residence for voting purposes.”)
The lawsuit continues:
Thus, while the right to vote in Michigan is “an absolute constitutional right,” “certain requirements must be met before an individual can exercise his or her fundamental political right to vote.”
Congress enacted the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, 52 U.S.C. § 20301, et seq. (“UOCAVA”), to ensure that members of the United States Armed Forces and other American citizens who live outside America’s territory may register and vote in federal elections. UOCAVA provides that a member of the armed forces or an overseas citizen may vote in the state in which they previously resided. See 52 U.S.C. § 20301(1), (5). UOCAVA has the effect of partially preempting State residency requirements for some overseas voters.
Despite the Constitution’s unambiguous adjure that no person may vote in Michigan unless they reside in Michigan, the Secretary of State has distributed guidance that “AUnited States citizen who has never resided in the United States but who has a parent, legal guardian, or spouse who was last domiciled in Michigan is eligible to vote in Michigan as long as the citizen has not registered or voted in another state.” Election Officials Manual, Chapter 7: Military and Overseas Voters, Federal Voter Registration and Absent Voting Programs guidance
On its face, Chapter 7 extends voter qualifications to individuals who have never resided in Michigan. As a result, certain people who have never resided in Michigan (or perhaps anywhere else in this country) are registering to vote and voting in Michigan elections. Michigan election officials have registered persons to vote who have never resided in Michigan and have allowed them to vote in Michigan’s state and federal elections.
This is a violation of the Michigan Constitution, and, as applied to Plaintiffs, it dilutes their votes and harms their organizational missions.
The lawsuit explains how MI SOS Benson’s guidance harms Chesterfield Twp City Clerk Cindy Berry, who is being asked to violate her oath of office to uphold the MI Constitution while being bound to the MI SOS instructions.
Moreover, Chapter 7 subjects Cindy Berry to competing obligations. On the one hand, she takes an oath to uphold the Michigan Constitution; on the other hand, she is bound by the Secretary’s instructions. See MCL 168.765a(17) (“The secretary of state shall develop instructions consistent with this act . . . The instructions developed under this subsection are binding on the operation of an absent voter counting board or combined absent voter counting board used in an election conducted by a county, city, or township.”). Plaintiffs thus seek declaratory relief that Chapter 7 misstates the law and that under the Michigan Constitution, only persons who reside in Michigan may vote in Michigan.
The lawsuit explains how counting ballots of intelligible voters who never lived in Michigan will result in an inaccurate tally of the votes cast by legitimate voters. Furthermore, since an overwhelming number of overseas voters vote for Democrats, this scheme to register voters who have never lived in Michigan will affect the outcome of what should be a free and fair election.
Counting ballots of ineligible overseas voters who never resided in Michigan will result in an inaccurate tally of votes. Moreover, overseas voters overwhelmingly support Democratic candidates.3 Ex. C. Thus, counting the ballots of ineligible overseas voters will disproportionally harm Republican candidates and undermine the Republican candidates’ rights to a fair and accurate electoral count. It will also dilute the lawful votes cast by Plaintiffs’ members and voters.
On Wednesday evening, Michigan’s top law enforcement officer, AG Dana Nessel, took to “X” to threaten the lawyers who filed the lawsuit against MI SOS Benson and BOE Director Jonathan Brater with sanctions and tell the Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer-appointed Circuit Court Judge Sima Patel, that she “MUST dismiss the lawsuit!”
Here is her threatening tweet:
In response to a lawsuit challenging the rights of military and overseas voters, @miattygen @dananessel filed briefs today and Monday in the Michigan Court of Claims urging the dismissal of the case. Read more at https://t.co/lNtzhaCuIC pic.twitter.com/4IPfnYsu0s
— Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (@MIAttyGen) October 16, 2024
Jocelyn Benson has already lost ten lawsuits to date, and the number will likely continue to climb as she continues to thumb her nose at those who attempt to secure our elections in advance of November 5, 2024.
Why have so many lawsuits been filed against the MI SOS?
Why doesn’t Jocelyn Benson want to ensure our elections are conducted in such a way that there can be no question they are open, transparent, fair, and above all, safe from election interference by a particular party, foreign nation, or outside group?
Shouldn’t a state’s top election official make it his or her responsibility to ensure that every election official implements basic requirements like voter identification, verification of US citizenship, and signature and address verification? Don’t Michigan voters deserve the right to feel comfortable knowing that dead voters are still listed as active voters on the voter rolls, outside, third-party groups are not attempting to register dogs, US Postal workers aren’t dropping off stacks of ballots in drop boxes in strict violation of the USPS rules, there are not more registered voters than eligible voters in 53 counties in the state of MI, election officials or workers are not manipulating voter rolls, and that eligible voters are allowed to vote ONCE in our elections?
Why would any Secretary of State fight to stop those safeguards from being implemented? And why is Dana Nessel so afraid of a lawsuit that is simply demanding that overseas voters MUST follow Michigan’s election laws?
