The quickest win is to make you irrelevant before you argue.

I see a similarity here.

“Standing.” That magical word judges love to toss around when they want to clear their dockets. If you don’t have skin in the game, you don’t get to play.

Now, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson wants to codify that same escape hatch into election challenges. According to one of her her shiny new proposals:

“The requirement that the challenger have personal knowledge that the challenged voter is ineligible is not satisfied when the challenger’s basis for their claim is third-hand information such as an online database, United States Postal Service information, or other information from a third-party such as another resident contacted during a house-to-house canvass.”

Translation? If you actually do the work—research the rolls, cross-check the addresses, talk to the neighbors—sorry, still not good enough.

As Patrice Johnson, founder of the Michigan Fair Elections Institute, put it:

“These rules handcuff the clerks and create a bureaucratic quagmire — all while extending the SOS’s overreach. While framed as ‘standardization,’ these rules create significant barriers to legitimate citizen oversight of voter rolls and petitions.”

In other words, the people who should have standing—citizens—are being told to sit down.

Read the rest here: The Midwesterner