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Michigan GOP Wins Appeal to Block Paid Voter Transportation

Michigan GOP Scores Appellate Win Against Voter Transportation

Michigan Republicans scored an appeals court victory upholding a law that makes it a crime to pay for transportation of voters to the polls in the swing state unless they’re physically unable to walk there.

The 2-1 decision late Wednesday blocks an injunction against enforcement of the law that had been issued by a lower court judge as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The ruling is a setback for Democratic-backed groups that said the ban needlessly makes voting more difficult.

Courts across the U.S. are weighing in on politically charged fights over access to voting during the pandemic, particularly rules over mail-in ballots.

Priorities USA, a group supporting Democrat Joe Biden, had sued last year to block the law, arguing that transportation to and from the polls can be a determinative factor in whether many voters, especially students and hourly workers, cast a ballot.

The decision “runs contrary to the very foundations of what it means to participate in a democracy and it is shameful that the Republican-controlled Michigan legislature continues to waste public resources in support of their blatantly political goals to prevent their constituents from accessing the ballot,” Priorities USA Chairman Guy Cecil said in a statement.

The Michigan appeals court said there are other ways to transport voters without violating state law, such as driving them for free. Even some paid campaign workers who aren’t specifically reimbursed for driving voters may be able to legally do so, the court said. But without a stay on the injunction, the state legislature would be undermined in its effort to curtail “vote buying” secured through paid rides to the polls, the court said.

“Although prosecutions for illicit vote-buying would still be possible, enforcement would be far more difficult, requiring proof of a quid pro quo,” the majority held. “And any vote-hauling fraud that does occur would still have affected the election itself.”

The appeals court also found that the expansion of mail-in voting in Michigan this year will reduce the number of people who need rides to the polls.

A dissenting judge wrote that the majority was paying “lip service to federalism,” by taking sides “in a controversial state debate.”

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.