Fair and Equal Michigan collects signatures online to protect LGBTQ+ rights
Steven Liedel has been struggling for more than a decade to make protections for gay and transgender residents part of Michigan state law. He seemed to be nearing his goal as the momentum gained for a push toward collecting signatures on the November general election ballot.
But getting enough signatures suddenly became much trickier when the coronavirus hit, said Liedel, a lawyer for the LGBTQ-rights advocacy group Fair And Equal Michigan, which is spearheading the ballot initiative.
The group has worked for years to bring into law an initiative that would amend Michigan’s Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act to prohibit anti-LGBTQ discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations.
“I started to wonder whether this issue had some sort of curse or something,” said Liedel. “My initial reaction was disappointment but then determination to get this done and to prohibit the discrmination of people because who they choose to love.”
In Michigan, the right to insert ballot measures is clashing with stay-at-home orders.
With only about 150,000 signatures collected, the group is well short of the 340,000 signatures required by state law to get on the ballot. Under Michigan law, voters can petition for new laws. The ballot process requires a certain number of signatures that is based on the number of votes cast in the previous gubernatorial election.
With hundreds of thousands of signatures still to collect, Fair and Equal Michigan has turned to a technological solution. Instead of offering up pens for signatures, the group is using the commercial software DocuSign, which captures handwriting electronically.
Using pen and ink, petitions needed to be signed in the presence of the person collecting the signatures. But with DocuSign, the group brings in people for signatures with a link on its website, social media and emails. By clicking on the link, voters can present two forms of identification and sign electronically.
Liedel contends that a decades-old state law allows electronic signatures. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s recently signed an executive order encouraging e-signature transactions, bolstering the legal justification for electronic signatures, Liedel said.
Organizing the effort to collect online signatures has taken a huge logistical effort. The staff of Fair and Equal Michigan has been unable itself to meet in person and has instead turned to using Zoom for video calls, Trevor Thomas, the group’s co-chair, said.
Part of the work is figuring out the complex process for getting electronic signatures. For voters, signing an electronic ballot is less straightforward than an ink signature and reaching out to voters and guiding them through the process has been a challenge, he said. “It’s not a quick and easy process because you really have to reach out to people,” added Liedel.
Support for the ballot measure seems to be gaining. The country’s three largest automobile manufacturers,General Motors Company, Ford Motor Company, and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, announced last week that they were endorsing the initiative.
“In order to continue to compete and win globally, we must be able to recruit and retain the talented people from all backgrounds,” Lori Costew, the chief diversity officer at Ford Motor Company, said in a statement. “In supporting these efforts to expand the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, Ford Motor Company affirms our belief that inclusion of everyone makes us stronger, drives more innovation and, in turn, is best for customers and other stakeholders.”
Despite the challenges posed by coronavirus, Thomas said he is optimistic that his group will get enough signatures and that the measure will pass.
“We are still in the game and we are going to get it done,” Thomas said. “I don’t see this as a partisan issue. I’m not anywhere else in the country that the chairs of the Republican party and the Democratic party are coming together the way they are here because we are just trying to update the civil rights act for the state of Michigan.”
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