Five poll challenger groups registered for Tuesday

Nov. 5—TRAVERSE CITY — Five groups are currently registered as poll challengers with the Grand Traverse County Clerk's office, records show.

County Clerk Bonnie Scheele said that is the most she's ever seen for an election.

The Election Integrity Fund, The Carter Center, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Michigan Citizens for Election Integrity and Promote the Vote have all filed to be poll challengers in Grand Traverse County.

Poll challengers are defined as "credentialed, partisan observers representing parties or other organizations." In Michigan, they also must be registered to vote in the same state where they are poll challengers.

Poll challengers, unlike poll watchers, have to register with county clerks, and they can make challenges to a voter's voter eligibility or to the voting process, including the way that polling places are being operated or the way that absent voter ballots are being processed.

Poll watchers have to stand in the public area and cannot stand behind the tables, Scheele said. Poll challengers, on the other hand, are able to do more in the precinct, including going behind the tables to watch what is going on, she said.

Poll watchers "can't get up close like the [challengers]," Scheele said. "Nobody registers to be a poll watcher; that's just anyone from the public who comes in and watches."

Poll challenger registration opened 30 days prior to Election Day, and closed 10 days later, Scheele said. Nonprofits that sign up to send out poll challengers are tasked with recruiting people to be poll challengers on their behalf and training them.

Political parties, including the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, may have poll challengers without filing separate petitions, according to instructions provided by the Michigan Board of Elections.

"We might have quite a few challengers in some of the precincts," Scheele said. "I'm not worried that they will misbehave. I think that we should be OK."

According to state election guidelines, if a challenger does not adhere to guidelines or tries to interfere with voting, they can be ejected by an election inspector.

Scheele said each clerk can decide if their polling location will have security, and whether that would include local law enforcement or private security officers.

Traverse City Police Department Captain Keith Gillis said officers will be present at every voting location in the city to ensure everyone's safety.

"There will be a police presence to obviously put everyone at ease as far as being able to go in and cast their ballot without any outside pressure or being worried about that," Gillis said.

The Grand Traverse County Sheriff's Office said they will have their community police officers spending some time at county polling stations on Tuesday, with other deputies stopping by if additional assistance is needed.

Scheele said clerks have already informed their workers about what exactly poll challengers can and cannot do ahead of Tuesday. Since there has been a "huge uptick" in absentee ballots for this year's election, she said that polling places might not be as crowded on Tuesday.

In a 27-page report that was finalized on Friday morning, the Michigan Bureau of Elections outlines the rights and duties of election challengers and poll watchers. This report follows the Michigan Supreme Court's suspension of a Court of Claims order on Thursday, according to court records.

Poll challengers can attend polling locations and locations where absentee ballots are being counted.

They must identify themselves and show their credentials once they arrive at a polling location and announce their departure if they leave before the close of the polls. They are only allowed to communicate with the precinct's designated "challenger liaison," typically the precinct chairperson, unless otherwise instructed.

Challenger liaisons must determine if challenges are made on proper grounds and be accepted or rejected.

Poll challengers must make their challenges, "in a discrete manner, not intended to embarrass the challenged voter, intimidate other voters, or otherwise disrupt the election process," according to the report.

If a challenge to a voter's eligibility is made and accepted, the election inspector must disallow that person from casting a ballot. If a challenge to the election process is made and accepted, election inspectors must take necessary steps to correct the error.

Scheele said her office just received the updated report early Friday.

Typically, Scheele said, local polling stations only have challengers from the political parties.

"This time, we have challenge groups from both sides of the aisle," Scheele said.

The Election Integrity Fund, an organization made up of about 1,500 volunteer members, is certified for poll challengers in almost every Michigan county, said Sandy Kiesel, the organization's executive director.

The number of poll challengers from her organization in each county varies, and she said she is unsure where exactly they will be in Grand Traverse County because the individual poll challengers decide where they want to go.

Election Integrity Fund was started in the summer of 2020 with the intent of training challengers for the election, Kiesel said. While training poll challengers is the organization's main focus, Election Integrity Fund also gathers information from Michigan's Qualified Voter File via Freedom of Information Act requests each month and compiles reports on that data.

"We believe if we can create transparency, then we create trust, and then people will be better able to line up behind whatever leaders are elected, instead of having all this controversy over who was really elected," Kiesel said. "If it's transparent and everybody can see the same thing, then all of that goes away."

Election Integrity Fund is nonpartisan, but it does stand against Proposal 2, Kiesel said. Kiesel also ran in the Republican primary for state representative in District 54.

On its official website, the organization also claims to have raised and donated "substantial" funds to support the Antrim County election lawsuit and coordinated Freedom of Information Act requests for data from voting machines in all 83 Michigan counties.

The Carter Center is a nonprofit organization founded by former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, that works throughout the U.S. and internationally on a variety of peacemaking missions. According to the organization's official website, The Carter Center is "supporting nonpartisan coalitions of citizens from across the political spectrum in Arizona and Michigan so that they can observe and report on the efficacy of their local election practices."

Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, whose stated mission is "to secure equal justice for all through the rule of law, targeting in particular the inequities confronting African Americans and other racial and ethnic minorities." It is a nonprofit organization that also is part of the Election Protection coalition that works to ensure all voters have an equal opportunity to vote.

Michigan Citizens for Election Integrity, an organization that deems the 2020 presidential election "the least secure election ever" on the homepage of its official website, advocates against Proposal 2 and refers to itself as a "nonprofit organization founded on the basis of the need to seek for truth about our election process."

Promote the Vote is another organization listed as a poll challenger in Grand Traverse County, and it is the organization that got Proposal 2 on the ballot this year. Their list of organizational supporters include the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, the League of Women Voters Michigan and the Michigan Education Association.