State Rep. Greg Markkanen on Thursday voted against Democrats’ efforts to strip key election security provisions from state law. The measures ultimately passed the House along party lines.

Senate Bills 603-04 amend Michigan Election Law, specifically the rules regarding the recount process. Under current law, recounts are permitted based on allegations of fraud or errors. The Democrat plan disallows fraud as a legitimate reason for a recount. It also requires a recount petition only allege an error, not fraud.

“Somehow, Democrats got it into their heads that if they all click their heels and chant, ‘there’s no place like home,’ the world would just fill with rainbows and sunshine, and all crime will magically disappear,” said Markkanen, R-Hancock. “That’s not how things work in the real world. Passing a law crippling checks and balances of our election system only further deepens public distrust. The world is full of bad people who may do bad things, including defraud our elections. Our system must be robust and equipped with all the tools necessary to uncover and investigate all discrepancies.”

Republicans have been sounding the alarm on several key areas of concern within the state’s election processes, highlighting oversights that are a breeding ground for potential fraud. This includes having no system to prevent someone from voting in multiple states. In fact, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson failed to remove 170,000 names of people who no longer lived in the state from the voter rolls, only finally doing so after she was sued.

Under Benson’s leadership, Michigan boasts more registered voters than people over the age of 18, putting the state’s voter registration rate at 102.8%. Republicans continue to point out the clear problems with more people being registered to vote than adults living in Michigan. Benson is currently facing a lawsuit from the Republican National Committee, who allege that by refusing to maintain accurate voter rolls, she is in violation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.

“If Secretary Benson is going to continue to boast a 102% success rate, I think she should consider coaching the Tigers or Pistons. I’d love to see how she manages to win more games than the teams are scheduled to play,” Markkanen said. “The Democrats are trying to manufacture a world where they get to celebrate whatever facts they make up for the day while they remove our ability to question anything. Elections aren’t made secure just because someone says so; election security happens when we take the time to scrutinize results and consider all possible problems, whether it be human error or criminal fraud.”

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