In another of many videos out of Detroit, where ballot harvesting is illegal, two women make their way to a drop box after parking their car. The woman in the green sweater is carrying what appears to be a large stack of absentee ballots. The other woman appears to be dressed in scrubs. it is illegal for a nursing home employer to help residents vote and you can only transport votes for people in your immediate family who reside in the same home as you do including mothers-in-law and fathers-in-law.
As the woman in the green sweater loads the absentee ballots in the drop box, the second woman uses her phone, apparently to make a video of the event. Some who pay for ballot harvesting require proof that the ballots were actually dropped into the box, hence the video. Once that job is complete, the two walk into the voting station. When they leave, they have a pile of white sheets that could be more absentee ballots.
In the video, both women are wearing masks, but once they get into their car, the driver pulls her mask down as if you can’t catch COVID inside the closed in the area inside the vehicle. Or, perhaps, the masks were just to hide their faces as they dropped off the ballots. In a video we posted a few days ago, a woman was caught making four drops to the same box over a two-day period.
Michigan does not have laws specific to nursing home absentee voting and observation: Michigan does not have special voting deputies for nursing homes (like, for example, Wisconsin) nor specific rules regarding assisting nursing home residents to participate in absentee voting.
The SOS manual does note that absentee ballots can be mailed to nursing homes:
A voter can receive an absent voter ballot at his or her registration address, at any address outside of his or her jurisdiction of residence, or at a hospital, nursing home, or similar institution.
Because there are no special laws or rules on nursing home absentee voting, the general rules for absentee balloting apply.
Generally, Michigan law on absentee balloting, applied to everyone, including nursing home residents, permits a household member or a family member (a “member of the immediate family of the voter” includes a father-in-law, mother-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, grandparent, or grandchild or an individual residing in the voter’s household), or an election official if those options are not available, to return a voter’s absentee ballot. Michigan law, Section 168.764a, provides: