by P.D. Lesko

Mayor Chris Taylor called six-hour lines to vote “a success.” Ann Arbor’s U.S Rep. Debbie Dingell was reportedly “moved to tears” and said, incredibly, in response to pizza and blankets distributed to those waiting in a six-hour line, “This is what Democracy looks like.” Ann Arbor’s new State Rep. Jason Morgan took the opportunity to celebrate voter suppression by posting to Twitter a selfie with a pizza.

Forcing certain voters in only one part of a city to wait four-six hours to register/vote in lines that snaked as far as the eye could see outside on a cold day and colder evening, is not a “success,” or what Democracy looks like. It is voter suppression.

As it turns out, you don’t need statewide voter suppression laws to discriminate against certain voters in Ann Arbor. You just need:

1. A City Clerk to under-staff “satellite” polls for thousands of student voters so that it takes them hours to register same-day, and to vote.
2. A Mayor and City Council members who explain away their own political failures with more deluded gaslighting than Vladimir Putin.
3. A State Rep.-to-be who has accomplished so very, very much at such a young age.
4. A U.S. Rep. not willing to stand up for her own constituents by doing something other than being “moved to tears,” and pretending that voter suppression is “what Democracy looks like.”

On Ann Arbor’s newly-elected State Rep. Jason Morgan’s campaign Facebook page, he wrote this: “I often have folks who wonder how I’ve done so much at a young age….” After I read it, I didn’t know whether to laugh, or put on black to mourn Morgan’s replacement of Rep. Yousef Rabhi in Lansing, due to term limits.

Jason’s latest accomplishment at such a young age? Like Rep. Debbie Dingell, and the Mayor, on Nov. 8, Morgan watched voter suppression targeting thousands of his own constituents and did nothing. Well, not nothing. Jason watched the voter suppression of his own constituents, then shot out a Tweet of himself smiling with a pizza (he has since deleted the Tweet after the local CBS News affiliate used it in their reporting).

Morgan told the media he did “what he could to make sure students stayed in line so they could vote. First, he called out for coffee and pizza and made another ask before the temperatures plunged at sunset.” Jason Morgan failed to recognize voter suppression, or if he did, he failed miserably in his responsibility to help the voters vote.

How many of those students left the line? No one knows. However, by being forced to wait six hours to register and to vote, thousands of University of Michigan students were treated to the same kind of voter suppression that poor, Black voters still suffer under in Georgia and Mississippi. The difference? In the South, Democrats file lawsuits to combat voter suppression. In Ann Arbor’s cozy Neo-Dem country club, progressives gaslight (“it was a success”), abrogate their legal duty to protect Democracy (six-hour long lines is “what Democracy looks like”), and take selfies with pizzas.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Dept. of Justice was monitoring polls across the Country on election day. Promote the Vote, a coalition that includes the NAACP, the League of Women Voters and the American Civil Liberties Union, coordinated an election day hotline and had hundreds of observers at polling locations throughout Michigan. Taylor, Morgan and Dingell didn’t do the one thing they should have done: report the obscenely long voter lines to state and federal officials as voter suppression.

Taylor, obviously, would have been reporting the Ann Arbor City Clerk. Morgan, who was endorsed by Taylor and who endorsed his candidacy right back, would have needed the political balls to protect the rights of the voters over his own political self-interests. He obviously doesn’t have political balls. Rep. Dingell, who does have political balls, has just moved to Ann Arbor in a redrawn district. She has a target on her back. County Dems want her gone, replaced by a Neo-Dem “fauxgressive” who is going to do the bidding of the local machine, including but not limited to, discouraging the EPA from declaring Ann Arbor a Superfund site in order to clean up the 1,4 dioxane Gelman Plume.

University of Michigan student voters were forced to stand in line, in the cold, for up to six hours in order to same-day register and vote, because the Ann Arbor City Clerk office didn’t anticipate that 18, 19, 20 and 21-year-olds would wait until the last minute to register to/and vote. Had the City Clerk been a freshman comp. prof., there would have been quadruple the number of workers at those “student” polls. Any faculty member will tell you that undergraduates can be expert procrastinations.

If it had been thousands of dogs waiting in that line, in the cold, without food or water, shivering, outraged local Democrats would have called the Police, the Governor, the Humane Society, Channel 7 news, posted to Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter (in Morgan’s case, selfies), and tried desperately to find the number of the White House. However, it was just thousands of students–not dogs.

Morgan says he got to the polls at 10 a.m. He had plenty of time to call the U.S. Dept. of Justice to ask for help to force local officials to remedy the long lines. He called for pizza, instead. Likewise, Rep. Debbie Dingell and Ann Arbor’s Mayor were at the polls in time to see lines that stretched down State Street from the University of Michigan Museum of Art polling location.

Rep. Dingell is actually right: six hour lines to register/vote for University of Michigan students is how Democracy works…in Ann Arbor. Thanks to the pie-shaped City Council Wards, student voters (who live in the tips of the pie-shaped wards) and their candidates are disadvantaged. Likewise, the August Democratic primary effectively disenfranchises tens of thousands of U-M student voters.

Now, U-M students have to wait six hours to vote? That should bring not only tears to Debbie Dingell’s eyes, but should also bring an investigation by state and federal officials of the Ann Arbor City Clerk, as well as the inaction of Taylor, Morgan and Dingell–all of whom had a responsibility to protect those student voters from the deliberate suppression of their right to vote.

The secretary of state’s office said it will work with city officials, university administrators and student leaders in Ann Arbor and other college communities to “identify and implement practices to prevent such situations” going forward.

Let’s hope so.