The Chelsea Standard
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
Land takes tough questions on elections, driver's licenses
By Edward Freundl, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: April 3, 2008
Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land answered these questions from audience members on a wide range of topics during a visit to Chelsea on Saturday.
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Q. What's Michigan going to do about absentee ballots?
A. There are five reasons you can be eligible for an absentee ballot: you're a poll worker, your age, medical reasons, serving in the military, or being out of town.
My feeling is, you should be able to vote absentee if you want to. I've asked the Legislature to do that, but it's kind of in limbo right now.
Q. With the new IDs are we heading for a national ID card?
A. Talk to your Congressman about that. Our goal is to keep it simple and secure and to eliminate fraud. The enhanced ID is an option; you don't have to have it if you don't want it.
Q. A lot of people live here but don't have a Michigan driver's license, like college kids, but no one ever checks. You should be a Michigan citizen to have a Michigan driver's license.
A. We studied that in Detroit, and it turned out that less than 1 percent did not have a Michigan ID, because driver's licenses are needed for so many transactions these days. We also have affidavits — if you don't have a photo ID when you go to vote, you sign an affidavit and your vote will be counted.
We do double-check with other states, we send notification; if the other state doesn't follow up, I can't do anything about that.
Q. What do election workers do with the photo ID you have to show when you go in to vote?
A. They look at the photo to verify that you are you; if there's a question they are supposed to get the election supervisor to decide what to do from there.
The new ID will be used as a voter card: you swipe the card through, your name comes up on a list electronically.
We just guess for voter turnout; the media always wants to know turnout and this gives us the number automatically
This gets the clerk out of the precinct faster at the end of the night. You just run a report, there's no need to verify.
Also, if you happen to come into the wrong precinct, it has the entire county on the list, so the election worker will be able to direct you to the right place.
Q. How do you eliminate frauds with student visas?
A. A process is not in place yet but we're working on it. There are 27 categories of being here legally, according to the federal government. It's going to be interesting to see how this is going to work.
The bigger issue I'd like to see them fix faster is Social Security numbers — we're not hooked up with the feds' database yet.
Q. We are free individuals; as Republicans we should stand up for that. A driver's license is a document giving permission to drive, it's not an ID card.
I don't need the government knowing where I'm traveling or how I voted.
We don't need a central database, we're sovereign individuals, none of this is going to stop terrorism.
The Social Security number is just a number, it's not an ID. How can any liberty-loving Republican not stand against the federal government on this instead of embracing it?
It's a domestic passport, it's having to show papers, it's Nazi Germany all over again. You don't have to embrace it.
A. I've been down this road before with HAVA (Help America Vote Act). We're the only major state that doesn't have the Justice Department telling us how to run an election.
If you don't have a REAL ID you won't be able to do business with the federal government, get on a plane or get a Social Security number. We thought it would just be easier to do it this way.
Q. Walk us through redistricting.
A. We will go through redistricting again in 2010. It's very contentious — it starts out in the Legislature and ends up in the courts.
I'm not so hip on the idea that it makes that much difference to individual candidates. If you're a good candidate, people will vote for you.
Q. Is there any federal money attached to these new REAL ID federal requirements?
A. No, only in two other states does the Secretary of State handle motor vehicles.
It's going to cost the rest of the states a lot of money, because they are not nearly as efficient as us.
We have everything in one place; we don't have the costs the other states do.
Q. Is there a way to link getting a driver's license with graduating from school?
A. I'm not sure how that would work; I'm not sure that it WOULD work.
Parents have the power to control that until they're 18. We do have parents who come and turn in their kid's license.
Q. What about people who continue to drive after their license has been taken away? What can be done to enforce that?
A. We're not enforcers, we're administrators. We don't have the tools to do that.
Generally speaking, we've found there are two kinds of drivers: speeders and drunk drivers.
Speeders usually outgrow it over time; drunk drivers usually fall into two categories: kids and alcoholics.
One thing is consistent — most of them started with an MIP (minor in possession of alcohol) violation.
We'd like to help them realize that when they're younger, but unless someone goes out and follows them there's not much we can do.
I feel a first MIP offense should be treated as a first drunken-driving offense.
In Michigan, after your first drunk driving conviction we'll let you have your license back after a period of time and paying a lot of money.
Bit with a second conviction, your life driving a vehicle is over.
The Legislature came up with a lot of fees, but I wasn't in favor of that.
If you've gotten to that point, you've got a lot of other problems and you just won't pay it.
I've tried working with the Treasury Department on the fees. People come in and try to pay all the costs to us; the Treasury just hasn't seen the light on this.
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