State Rep. Brian BeGole this week stood up for the integrity and functionality of Michigan’s elections process by voting against Democrat plans that will strip away verification and validity measures specifically enacted to prevent fraud.

Senate Bills 603-04 amend Michigan Election Law by making several misguided changes to the state’s recount process. Under current law, vote recounts may be done based on allegations of fraud or mistake, but the plans not only remove fraud as a reason for a recount, but also state that recount petitions may only allege an error and requires petitions to be based on the notion that the election results would have been different without that error.

“These bills take a ‘nothing to see here’ approach to potential fraud in our elections process. This will weaken our election laws at a time when many people already have questions about the effectiveness of our state’s elections system and what elected leaders are doing to shore things up,” said BeGole, of Antrim Township. “We shouldn’t remove a possible reason for how an election outcome may have been impacted. These bills are an overreaction that will ultimately lead to problems down the line.”

BeGole noted that watering down these definitions and protections is counterproductive when several clear inadequacies have existed within the state’s elections process that could pave the way for fraud. This includes having no system to tell if someone votes in multiple states, with the Secretary of State failing to remove 170,000 names of people who no longer live in the state from the voter rolls only after she was sued.

Despite BeGole’s opposition, the bills were approved on party lines and now move to the Senate for further consideration.