To Our County Clerk / Register of Deeds:
Your campaign yard sign is still sitting in my garage, waiting to be displayed. Note that this is not an ordinary election year, in Michigan or the nation. We would agree that the county clerk position should be a nonpartisan office, given its electoral responsibilities. Indeed, with the possible exception of judgeships, it is hard to think of an elected office in which neutrality is more critical. But why hasn’t the Michigan Association of County Clerks taken a leadership role in making clerk positions nonpartisan on the ballot? You were the Michigan County Clerk of the Year in 2011; perhaps you could be the voice for that change.
In addition, the Michigan legislature, dominated by your Republican Party, has chosen to impose a series of actions to deny the rights and powers of Michigan voters. In Michigan, sufficient signatures were collected to raise the minimum wage to $10.10. But the Republican legislature imposed a minimum wage increase that was lower and attached a legislative mechanism to prevent voters from passing any ballot initiative for more. Michigan voters overturned the odious Emergency Manager Law, but Republicans in the Michigan legislature promptly reinstituted another version of it, again attaching the legislative mechanism to deny the voters. We have subsequently seen the provisions of the Emergency Manager Law misused with the Flint water system, poisoning its citizens, and then an attempt made to cover up and deny the actions. That does not even consider the various cities and school districts that were disenfranchised by the law. Where was the Michigan Association of County Clerks on these issues? Did you speak out against this denial of the will of the people?
I have learned recently that the state of Michigan is participating in the voter check program advanced by Kris Kobach of Kansas. Under the guise of preventing voter fraud (studies have repeatedly shown the incidence of voter fraud in America today to be insignificant), the program seems designed cynically to promote voter suppression of likely Democratic voters. It is an inconvenience to our state, a waste of money, and potentially a violation of civil rights. Have you and the Association spoken out against this program? This is clearly an area where you should be providing leadership.
Finally, there is the issue of Donald Trump. You will no doubt argue that you must remain nonpartisan on the issue of the presidential election. But that is not good enough this year. As a representative of the Michigan Republican Party, you cannot stand by neutrally when a candidate as unfit for office as Donald Trump is running. I won’t take the time here to elaborate all of the ways in which Trump has horrified and repelled Americans; if you have not realized this by now, you never will. At the very least you should recognize that Trump’s charges that the American election is rigged and election processes cannot be trusted, and should not be honored, are a direct attack against you and county clerk officials across the country. The politics of Donald Trump must be disavowed by our political leaders.
As a representative of the Michigan Republican Party, your silence implies your support for Donald Trump, and that is a disqualifier of support for you as the guardian of our election processes. Other prominent Republicans, including former Governor William Milliken and current Governor Rick Snyder, have bravely declared that they will NOT support Trump. I hope you will have the courage to do the same. That public stance, combined with speaking against legislative actions that are denying Michigan voters their rights, would go a long way toward demonstrating that you are the right candidate to be our County Clerk.