GOPers Spin Up Fresh Conspiracy Theories About New Law To Block Baseless Election Challenges

Republican lawmakers and right wing media are spreading misinformation about two new election laws that will regulate recounts and audits in Michigan, falsely claiming that the newly signed legislation deliberately makes it more difficult to investigate fraud. 

Sponsors of the bill and election experts, however, say that the the new laws are merely updates to the state’s 70-year-old recount law, refining the recount process, tamping down on truly frivolous recounts, and making clear that a recount is an administrative process, not a political one.

“Most of what these bills do is they rightsize the recount process saying, okay, this is what recounts are for, this is what they’re not,” Justin Levitt, a professor of law at Loyola Law School, told TPM. “It keeps them [recounts] available when they might do some good and it takes them off the table when they’re unlikely to do some good.”

Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed Senate Bill 603 and Senate Bill 604 into law on this week, saying in a statement that the bills “establish guidelines to support fair and free elections.” 

The pair of bills, which were sponsored by Democratic state Sens. Stephanie Chung and Jeremy Moss change the requirements for requesting and conducting an election recount. The new law also modifies the threshold needed for an automatic recount, alters the sentencing guidelines for some election law violations and increases election recount filing fees. 

As experts told TPM, unnecessary audits both “wreak havoc with public confidence” in the election process, are expensive, and don’t actually resolve anything.

“I think this legislation strikes a pretty decent balance between allowing people to request a recount, but making sure there is a basis for doing so,” election integrity consultant David Levine similarly said. 

The legislation allows for recounts in precincts with a mismatch between signatures in a poll book and the number of ballots that were tabulated there. A recount in an out of balance precinct is permitted in these circumstances if the discrepancy is large enough that it would change the results of the election and if the petitioner provides a satisfactory explanation and a sworn affidavit.

In the past, an out of balance precinct was not necessarily able to resolve this type of discrepancy. So, in this way, as Levitt explained, the new law, despite criticism from opponents, actually expands the availability of recounts in certain circumstances over and above what the previous law had allowed for. 

The bills also make clear that law enforcement, and not the county’s board of canvassers, has the power to investigate fraud, while specifying too that “a recount is not an investigation or an audit of the conduct of an election.” 

“We wanted to very much make sure that the role of the board of canvassers during a recount was clear,” explained Moss. “If there’s a claim of fraud, we want to know what those claims are. And the appropriate and resourced agencies to conduct those investigations are law enforcement agencies.”

Opponents of the legislation specifically latched on to the part of the bill that explains the role of the board of canvassers as a way to spread misinformation. 

“That’s the part of the law that has been totally abused and perverted by election deniers and has totally misconstrued the entire intent of the proposal,” Moss said. 

An article from The Federalist earlier this month falsely argued that the legislation is “evidence of the left’s plan to rig the 2024 election by attempting to silence legitimate concerns about election fraud.”

Michigan Republican state Rep. Anne Bollin, who voted against the measures, said last month: “Our current laws provide bipartisan county boards of canvassers the authority to investigate potential fraud. They must have confidence in the administration of the election, so they are confident in certifying the results. Removing these safeguards is a step in the wrong direction.”

And last month, GOP state Sen. Jim Runestad, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the bills are designed to “make the recount process vastly more complicated and expensive in order to facilitate the potential of mischief in the recount process.” 

However,  the new law does not eliminate the many ways to address the rare actual instances of voter fraud. 

“A recount process involves making sure that you got the math right,” Levitt said. “There are lots of other ways to address other perceived problems in the system when they actually exist.”