LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – After the shooting on the campus of Michigan State University, elected Michigan Democrats quickly started discussing and introducing gun control legislation. One of those pieces of legislation is Michigan House Bill 4127 which includes making it a crime to carry a gun within 100 feet of an absentee voter ballot drop box for 40 days before an election. A person who violates this law would be guilty of a misdemeanor, punishable by imprisonment of up to 90 days or a fine of $100 or both.

Current law doesn’t appear to have many requirements about where absentee drop boxes are located other than what’s listed in MCL 168.761d which says “The drop box must be in a publicly accessible, well-lit area with good visibility.”

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Although many drop boxes are situated within or outside of a county clerk’s office, there are many drop boxes all over Michigan that are placed in other areas. A cursory search of absentee drop boxes in Michigan turned up recreation centers, churches, community centers, college campus locations, a golf course, parks, libraries, a bus center, and a public works location. The drop boxes themselves are being used to define a “gun free zone” and not the actual location.

In dense cities like Lansing, Detroit or Grand Rapids, a gun owner who wants to carry a gun to protect themselves couldn’t possibly know where all of the drop boxes are located. That will lead to Michiganders being charged with a crime for just walking by a drop box if they are carrying a gun.

Although the drop boxes are required to be designated as absentee drop boxes, they aren’t boldly painted in neon yellow or bright red to alert voters to their locations And with Proposition 2, there will be even more absentee drop boxes installed all across Michigan as the legislation gives the “right” to at least one (1) state-funded secure drop box for every municipality and for municipalities with more than 15,000 registered voters at least one (1) drop box for every 15,000 registered voters. It also says that the drop boxes will be “distributed equitably throughout the municipality and accessible 24 hours per day during the 40 days prior to any election and until 8 pm on election day.”

When Michigan News Source asked Grand Traverse County Clerk Bonnie Scheele where absentee drop boxes can be located after only finding the information about drop boxes being in publicly accessible well-lit areas, Scheele responded that the “Bureau of Elections is currently in the process of trying to figure out how to implement all the changes brought about by Proposal 2” and said she didn’t know the specifics on the ballot drop box location requirements yet.

HB 4127 was referred to the Elections Committee and they had a hearing with testimony on Tuesday morning. Michigan Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said about HB 4127 and 4128, which were written to prohibit firearms in polling places and includes the legislation about drop boxes, ”I am grateful for the work done today by the members of the House Elections Committee who held a meaningful discussion about the need to keep voters and poll workers safe by prohibiting firearms at polling places when people are voting. Thank you for your work to protect Michigan’s election workers and voters.”

Testimony is documented on the Elections Committee website and included written statements from opposition groups like Pure Integrity Michigan Elections (PIME) along with allies Stand Up Michigan, Freedom Alliance Project and Michigan Fair Elections. Organizations that support HB 4127 include Brady United Against Gun Violence from Washington D.C., Promote the Vote, the Anti-Defamation League and also several individuals who were scheduled to testify.

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Promote the Vote said in their statement, “Guns do not belong anywhere that voting or election administration occur. The presence of guns can be intimidating to voters and election officials and can have a chilling effect on turnout, particularly among historically disenfranchised populations.” They also say that while the bill bans guns near drop boxes it does not “ban guns at or near clerk’s offices, where voters may pick up, vote, and submit an absentee ballot.”

PIME pointed out in their written statement that “Declaring areas as ‘gun free’ does not make them safer” and in fact makes them more dangerous. They cite that “a full 96% of all mass shootings between 1998 and 2018 occurred in so called ‘gun free zones’” according to crimeresearch.org.

PIME also stated that the Supreme Court has already ruled on the subject in the recent Bruen decision that disallows states from prohibiting the bearing of firearms in public unless such a prohibition applies to a limited number of “sensitive places” such as courthouses and schools.

The fact that a drop box is an object and not a place makes it likely that the absentee ballot drop off box part of the legislation will be challenged in court.

Looking ahead at a future possibility, what would stop the Whitmer administration from putting absentee ballot drop boxes close to pawn shops, gun stores and gun clubs in order to shut them down? We won’t know if that is allowed until the Bureau of Elections releases their Proposition 2 rules to the election officials and the public.