Religious Coercion Could Soon Be Reality For Michigan Voters


Five Republican senators from Michigan have proposed an amendment to a bill that would allow for religious coercion of voters on election day.

The senators include Patrick Colbeck, Mike Green, Tom Casperson, Jim Marleau, and Mike Shirkey. They put forward SB 832, an amendment to a Michigan law. This law prohibits religious figures from threatening voters to influence their vote. The law says:

“A priest, pastor, curate, or other officer of a religious society shall not for the purpose of influencing a voter at an election, impose or threaten to impose upon the voter a penalty of excommunication, dismissal, or expulsion, or command or advise the voter, under pain of religious disapproval.”

If the amendment passes, the above excerpt will be stricken from the law. If this happens, religious officials can use all sorts of rhetoric and coercion at voting sites to influence people’s votes. “Vote for this person or burn in Hell,” essentially.

Interestingly, the senators aren’t planning to strike the portion that deems it a crime to influence a voter with an offer of “valuable consideration.”

Voters cannot be influenced by valuable consideration, “not limited to, money, property, a gift, a prize or a chance for a prize, a fee, a loan, an office, a position, an appointment, or employment.”

Basically, you can’t offer voters goods and services with the intention of manipulating their vote. The senators are leaving this as a crime. The implication of leaving this intact but not the portion above is that the senators view assurance of not getting religiously punished as less than “valuable consideration.”

The bill was delivered to the Senate Committee on Elections and Government Reform. It comes less than a year after Michigan governor Rick Snyder signed a bill that allowed adoption agencies to refuse service because of their religious beliefs. The legislation was intensely controversial at the time.

Featured image by Martin Douglamas, available under a Creative Commons license.