Voter ID bill causes flap between AG and House

Voter ID bill causes flap between AG and House leadership.
This editorial was in the Aug. 2 edition of the Detroit Free Press. Although it pits Craig DeRoche against the Attorney General, it’s Chris Ward’s attempt to disenfranchise voters with his voter ID bill that has caused the flap. The law would require people to show photo identification at the polls. A bill requiring photo identification was signed into law in 1995, but it was struck down by an opinion by former Michigan Attorney General Frank Kelley. Mike Cox apparently agrees with Kelly.
Generally, legislation is introduced to correct a problem, but what problem is Ward trying to correct? What voter fraud is he trying to correct? When was the last time you heard of voter fraud in Michigan? The answer to all of those questions is there is no problem with voter fraud in Michigan.
Of course, we have voter turnouts of less than 30 percent in most areas, and that’s a problem he should be addressing. Instead, he’s wants to depress voter turnout even more by throwing a roadblock up to voters. Not coincidentally, it’s minority and the poor who will be disenfranchised.
Most of the bills Ward has introduced are nothing more than thinly disguised attempts to keep him and his cronies in power, and that’s what is intended here with this insult to voters.

Seven years ago, Republicans in the Legislature tried to enact a law erasing much of the authority of the state attorney general, at the time a Democrat named Jennifer Granholm. The effort died, and deservedly so, amid a political mini-tempest over taking power away from the elected lawyer of the people.
Now, state House Speaker Craig DeRoche is attempting to do the same thing, only through the courts and against Attorney General Mike Cox, a fellow Republican. In a legal brief, DeRoche has asked the state Supreme Court to throw out the long-held legal principle that an attorney general's opinion has the effect of law unless challenged and overturned in court.
Such is the fate, evidently, of attorneys general who dare to issue opinions that certain legislators don't like. Power plays such as this actually underscore the need to retain the Attorney General's Office as an independent arbiter for state and local governments. Even DeRoche must see some value in the office, since he has asked for an attorney general's opinion himself on an unrelated issue.
Actually, attorney general's opinions, often issued on an advisory basis and sometimes suggesting a legal course to follow, keep a lot of things from becoming costly legal battles for the state or the many local governments that make inquiries. And when the opinions have been challenged in court, they have been upheld more than 90% of the time, which underscores the way the office, at least on opinions, hews to the law rather than to politics.
The people of Michigan elect an attorney general statewide to serve as their chief law enforcement officer, not as a lackey to the Legislature. The framers of the current state Constitution, which was enacted in 1963, even referred to the attorney general as the "watchdog" of state government, on behalf of taxpayers, consumers and public officials. DeRoche is wrong to suggest it should be any different.