Great Lakes Wire

A New York based activist group known for its support of Black Lives Matter and de-funding police efforts is the largest financial backer of a campaign to block voter identification requirements in Michigan, state filings show.

Michigan Secretary of State records show the New York City-based American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has given nearly $2.6 million to “Promote the Vote,” which is leading the anti-voter ID effort in Michigan. 

The ACLU is responsible for some 70 percent of the campaign’s funding.

Secure MI Vote is promoting a change to Michigan state law to require photo ID for in-person voters. Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Wisconsin and Tennessee currently have such a requirement, as do all 47 countries in Europe.

The ACLU says such voter ID laws are “racist” and that black voters would be less likely to vote if an ID were required.

The group has been one the nation’s leading supporters of Black Lives Matter (BLM), a Marxist anti-police group, providing funding and legal assistance and even bailing out BLM rioters when arrested for vandalizing property.

“Together with our partners and allies, we are fighting to greatly reduce the role, presence, and responsibilities of police in America,” ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero wrote, arguing in summer 2020 that “reducing funding to police departments and reinvesting those funds into Black and Brown communities are necessary steps to prevent further harm and to restore the promise of our Constitution for all people.”

Romero said cities should be “prohibiting police from enforcing” laws, “issuing fines and making arrests” for crimes he felt were “non serious.”

Other major Promote the Vote donors, filings show, include Our Water, Our Democracy of Ann Arbor and the George Soros-backed Sixteen Thirty Fund of Washington, D.C.

Voters might have “forgotten it at home”

In kicking off the campaign last fall, Promote the Vote manager Shira Roza said requiring a photo id at the polls amounts to “voter suppression.”

“There are many reasons why a voter might not have a photo ID on Election Day,” she said, explaining they may have “forgotten it at home” or “it may have been stolen.”

“Our voting rights are under attack,” she said. “(Voter ID) amounts to nothing less than voter suppression.”

Voting without an ID is the exception in U.S. states and Democratic countries.

“In some countries, even driver’s licenses aren’t considered authoritative enough forms of voter identity verification. The Czech Republic and Russia require passports or military-issued IDs. Other countries use national identity cards. Still others, such as Colombia and Mexico, require a biometric voter ID,” wrote economist and researcher John Lott, Jr., who wrote a paper on the topic last summer.

Black vote totals have actually risen in states that have implemented voter ID laws.

In Indiana, Reuters reported that after a 2006 voter ID law passed, voter registration and turnout rose in the state's two counties with the state's largest black populations-- Marion (Indianapolis) and Lake (Gary)-- according to a Reuters analysis.

In Georgia, black voter turnout rose after voter ID laws were passed in 2007. 

A record number of Georgia blacks voted for Barack Obama in 2008, his first run for President. Black turnout that year was 76 percent, or four percentage points higher than in 2004, before the voter ID law. Georgia black turnout was also higher in the 2010 midterm elections, seven points higher than the comparable 2006 midterms, according to a Reuters analysis.

“I don’t think it has hampered anybody from being able to let their voice be heard,” Georgia’s then-Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, said.

A March 2021 survey by pollster Rasmussen Reports found that 75 percent of likely U.S. Voters believe voters should be required to show photo identification such as a driver’s license before being allowed to vote, and 21 percent are opposed to such a requirement. That's up from 67 percent in favor, per a Rasmussen poll in Oct. 2018.

A 2012 Reuters survey of 20,000 voters found that two percent of whites and three percent of blacks didn't have a photo ID.

Roza formerly worked as an associate lawyer at Levy Rather in New York and as Assistant General Counsel at the United Auto Workers in Detroit.

Promote the Vote’s President is Detroit “inclusion, equity and social responsibility” lawyer Khalilah Spencer. She is a partner at Honingman LLP. Its secretary is former Michigan state legislator Gilda Jacobs of Ann Arbor; its treasurer is former Michigan Planned Parenthood executive director Judy Karandjeff of East Lansing.

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Promote the Vote Funding

Donor	Location	Amount Given
American Civil Liberties Union	New York, NY	$2,595,412
Our Water Our Democracy	Ann Arbor, MI	$800,000
ACLU of Michigan	Detroit, MI	$336,551
Sixteen Thirty Fund	Washington, DC	$250,000
United Auto Workers	Detroit, MI	$150,000
American Federation of Teachers	Washington, DC	$50,000
AFT Michigan	Detroit, MI	$15,000
IBEW	Detroit, MI	$25,000
Ballot Initiative Strategy Center	Washington, DC	$20,000
	TOTAL	$4,241,963

Source: Michigan Secretary of State