Election officials in Detroit, Michigan need more elephants in the room to get right with the law that calls election workers to equally represent both major parties. Currently, they are hiring mostly Democrats.
Poll workers handle ballots and are well-placed to speak up if anything seems out of order. They are an important part of election integrity infrastructure.
Many states have laws requiring counties to hire an even mix of election workers to create poll worker parity, with a goal of, as close as possible, 50 percent Democrat and 50 percent Republican poll workers. That’s the case in Michigan, where the law requires election commissioners to “appoint an equal number, as nearly as possible, of election inspectors (aka workers) in each election precinct from each major political party.”
But in the city of Detroit, where the heavily Democrat vote take can outweigh the Republican-leaning vote in the rest of the state, approximately 10 percent of poll workers hired for the Aug. 6 primary were Republicans, according to city records obtained by a watchdog group.
“Our constitution was founded on the concept that checks and balances are the best way to ensure fairness,” Patrice Johnson, a founder and chair of Michigan Fair Elections, told The Federalist. “That’s why you have two parties that are supposed to be at the polls, working the polls, for checks and balances. When you don’t have a fair balance like that, you don’t have the checks and balance system working. That’s so critical.”
