Elections have consequences – The Sopris Sun

Editor’s note: Every summer, Ken Pletcher wrote a letter to readers of the Michigan Sopris Sun. Here is letter number four.

Hello again from the southeast shore of beautiful Lake Michigan, part of a region sometimes referred to as America’s Third Coast. I had planned to write in this fourth letter about our immediate neighbors behind our cottage, the Prairie Club, and its legacy of conservation and land stewardship, like so many organizations in the Roaring Fork Valley.

But that will have to wait until another time. With the election looming, Michigan will be one of several states that will be crucial in deciding who our next president will be. That seemed like a more pressing issue.

I first voted in the 1972 presidential election and have done so in virtually every election campaign since then (federal, state, and local), including by mail when I was in school in Japan in 1976. I consider it my duty as a citizen to do so, even if I am sometimes not so enthusiastic about the candidates. Not voting means someone else will decide who will govern you. And that can have consequences.

Michigan—particularly heavily Democratic Detroit—learned this in 2016, when Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by fewer than 12,000 votes (out of nearly 4.8 million cast). In Wayne County (which includes Detroit and its western suburbs), thousands of residents either did not vote at all, or when they did, they voted for a third-party candidate, or simply did not vote for any presidential candidate.

That this made a difference in the state’s voter turnout is evident in the 2020 results, when Joe Biden defeated Trump here by more than 150,000 votes, most of which came from significantly higher turnout in Wayne County. One Detroit resident said in an interview before the 2020 election that she had “learned her lesson” and was voting for Biden, a sentiment apparently shared by many fellow Detroiters.

It’s unclear how Michigan (and Detroit) residents will vote this year, but Michigan will once again be a crucial swing state that will affect the outcome. A poll of 1,000 Detroiters in April found that while the vast majority of them plan to vote, about 13 percent said they probably wouldn’t; Hispanics made up the bulk of the latter group, “often citing that their vote doesn’t count and that they’re unhappy with the candidates,” according to the report.

On another level, Michigan has long been known for its far-right and paramilitary groups. In the 1970s, it was one of the centers of the so-called Posse Comitatus groups and, from the mid-1990s, of organizations such as the Wolverine Watchmen. The Oklahoma City bombers are said to have visited one of these groups shortly before their attack in 1995.

Members of the Watchmen were involved in a plot to kidnap (and possibly murder) Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020. Several of them were tried and convicted of various crimes and sentenced to prison. About two dozen Michiganders have been charged in connection with the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Federal prosecutor Jack Smith, in his indictment of Trump for alleged attempts to tamper with the 2020 election, placed Michigan at the “epicenter” of the plot. One of the more dramatic components of that plot was a list of “fake” Republican electors from Michigan who unsuccessfully attempted to replace the duly elected Democratic electors in December 2020. All but one (who cooperated with prosecutors) have been charged with multiple crimes and are now awaiting trial.

I find these and similar actions across the country deeply disturbing, especially with the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding just two years away. At the Prairie Club’s annual Independence Day celebration, a member reads the Declaration of Independence. When I listened to it this year, I was struck by how some of the “injuries and usurpations” leveled at George III felt like they could have been aimed at Trump—and judging by the murmurings in the crowd, others apparently did, too.

We have faced and overcome serious threats to our country’s existence before, and I believe we now face another. Can our democracy prevail again? I want to believe so, but I am more afraid than ever. I urge people to vote – in Michigan, in Colorado, everywhere – and I sincerely hope that we do so with the common good for all of us in mind.