Editor's note: This story is part of Southwest Michigan's Second Wave's On the Ground Kalamazoo series.

KALAMAZOO, MI — Republican and Democratic politicians agree: Political campaigns are too expensive, and are too influenced by dark money. 

They also agree that all the disinformation saying otherwise is wrong — our election systems are trustworthy.

Make that retired Republican and Democratic politicians agree. 

Fred Upton and Mark Schauer, along with former Director of Elections for Michigan Chris Thomas, spoke on a panel hosted by Citizens Rising on "Protecting Democracy" at Western Michigan University on Oct. 1. 

Upton is the former Republican U.S. Representative for Michigan's 4th and 6th Congressional districts from 1987 to 2023. Schauer was the Democratic U.S. Representative for Michigan's 7th Congressional district; he also served in the Michigan House of Representatives (1997-2002) and the Michigan Senate (2003-2009).

Thomas is retired from 40 years of running Michigan elections under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Mark WedelCitizens Rising organized a panel, "Protecting Democracy" at Western Michigan University on Oct. 1. The talk was sponsored by Citizens Rising, a Kalamazoo nonpartisan group working to move "governmental bodies to revive a sense of trust and mutual respect within our nation." It was co-sponsored by the United States Association of Former Members of Congress (a bipartisan group; Schauer and Upton are members), and WMU groups working on discourse and urging voting on campus, WeTalk and WeVote.

Many forces are putting stress on our democracy, but the panel also pointed out that, in Michigan, at least, there's never been an easier time to vote.

"That's a lot of money."

The first election Thomas worked for was in 1978. Upton's first campaign was in 1986. Schauer's first run was for the Michigan House of Representatives in 1996. 

There was a lot of talk from the panel about when local newspapers had news, there were only three TV stations in most areas, and TikTok "was your grandfather's clock," as Upton says.

Thomas remembers when his office was working on election returns in the '70s when they could've just gone down the street to buy a paper to get the results. "The newspapers were way ahead of us," on election returns, he says. 

For his first campaign, Upton says, "We spent $100,000, of which $35,000 was an unpaid loan by me." For his last election in 2020, "I think we ended up spending about $5 or $6 million."

In 1996, Schauer attended a workshop for his campaign on how to raise $100,000. "Does that sound like a lot of money?"

"That's like chump change... I think there are state legislative campaigns that are probably seven figures."
 
Mark WedelCitizens Rising organized a panel, "Protecting Democracy" at Western Michigan University on Oct. 1. Schauer says his fundraising goal for his 2008 run for the U.S. House of Representatives was $3 million, which he accomplished. "Does that sound like a lot of money? That's a lot of money."

Upton says fundraising "takes away from legislating. That's why you sent these folks to D.C. You want to read the bill and study and figure out how to build a coalition to get things done."

Instead, "you're spending time on the phone," in another office — laws prevent fundraising from a congressperson's federal office, Upton points out.

Schauer says, "I would go to D.C. on Mondays and immediately get picked up by my staff at Reagan National Airport, taken to the Democratic National Committee offices... to do fundraising calls until we had some evening votes.

"When we weren't voting, weren't doing committee hearings… believe me, I was there," working at fundraising.

"It just distorts lawmakers' attention. I think it distorts their priorities. It disadvantages the people that send them there," Schauer says.

Dark money

"There were outside groups involved," Schauer says of the 2008 election. 

But outside groups became more prevalent after the next year when the Supreme Court held that the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act violated the First Amendment in Citizens United. 

"I said at that time — and I think I am right, I stand behind this —  that candidates would become incidental in campaigns, that the outside money, the dark money, would subsume, certainly neutralize — I think distort, candidly, the power of the electorate," Schauer says.

Upton recalls a recent election where "we were doing well in our polls, and, like two weeks before the election… I get a call from my campaign crew, and they said, 'Fred, you won't believe this, but someone just dropped like $300,000 in negative ads on you on Channel 3.'"

Upton asked, "Oh, where's this money coming from?"

He found out "It was all dark money. It was like, it didn't come from my opponent. It just came out of the blue, and it was just like the weirdest stuff.”

Mark WedelCitizens Rising organized a panel, "Protecting Democracy" at Western Michigan University on Oct. 1. Upton had to drop everything to respond. "I've got to go figure out what I've got to do, because we're going to have to go raise some more money, and we're going to have to put up a TV ad to counter this within 48 hours. It's got to be up on Channel 8, Channel 16 down in South Bend, as well as Channel 3 here," he says.

Then another attack ad came at him a few days later. "Fred, you won't believe this, but they just added on top of the $250,000, they've got another $400,000 that's coming on against you."

"I'm like, 'Whoa.'"

Upton, who announced his retirement after voting to impeach President Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, says, "I was never afraid to sort of differ with my party leadership when I thought they were wrong."

"And one of the things that I really believed in was campaign finance reform," he says. Upton recalls helping pass the McCain-Finegold Act in 2002, which was struck down in Citizens United.

Now, as a retired voter, Upton is getting mailers and seeing TV ads that are negative and have no clear source backing them. 

"It's an ugly process, the negative campaigns, and a lot of it, to me, is fueled by the dark money," he says. "For the most part, you really are in the dark."

Disinformation

The year following Citizens United, 2010, was the mid-term of the "rise of the Tea Party," Schauer says. "It was a heightened time, to say the least. It sort of is mild compared to a lot of things that have gone on since then."

That was the most expensive mid-term election up to that point, he says.

He feels that it’s "the responsibility of elected officials, in the present state of affairs, and misinformation and sort of perpetuating all kinds of doubt about the system," to help voters stay informed.

However, that’s a difficult job.

In 2009, during the debate on the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as "Obamacare," Schauer began "receiving these mass emails from constituents, people that I had known, I had gone to Rotary Club within Battle Creek, and some of whom had been donors. They were sending me this bizarre stuff," he says.

"I was very earnest and would take my time and hand write these responses, trying to dispel the misinformation about what was, in that case, in the draft of the Affordable Care Act. And I just literally could not keep up," he says.

Many of the emails were identical, as if from the same source of disinformation.”It became apparent that I was getting the same email from these trusted people. It was like, how are they buying into this?"

Efforts to spread disinformation have grown since then, with the many social media platforms, thanks to "the Elon Musk's of the world, or Zuckerberg's, sort of tamping down their protections," Schauer says. "It's sort of Wild West out there."

Upton remembers the days before "videos that you could get on your phone."

He says, "I've always wanted an educated electorate, folks who would sit down, maybe over the kitchen table, maybe talk with their spouse, or their kids, or their neighbors, say why they're voting for this person or that man or woman."

Upton continues, "Back then you had just, what, three TV stations? And you had a newspaper that would actually list your (representatives' votes in office), right?" 

Those days are gone.

Now, "you have all these other strange sources of media, some of them are bad, that are false," he says. "And it's much harder than today to be that educated voter that I think all of us want."

Mark WedelRetired U.S. Representative Mark Schauer (democrat) and Retired U.S. Representative Fred Upton shake hands at the Citizens Rising event.The panel's proposed solutions included laws to prevent blatant lying during elections, which would likely land in the courts and come under the First Amendment. 

Thomas pointed out how schools in Finland are teaching children media literacy and logic. 

Thomas says a segment on CBS' "Sunday Morning" showed a fourth-grade child who was told that "an alien landed four years ago — "

"I believe it!" Upton says.

— but the child figures that "if that were true, it would be all over the news," Thomas says.

People will increasingly need to have the skills to figure out if something is fake. Thomas says that with new technologies like artificial intelligence, "the big three" of Russia, Iran, and China are working to manipulate U.S. voters.

"So the Russians are boosting Trump. The Iranians, I don't know if they want Harris, but they certainly don't want Trump. The Chinese aren't really weighing in on a candidate, per se, but their stuff is, using fake newscasters to really talk about the drug use in America, the abortion issue, and the immigration issues, to just really stir up discord," Thomas says.

"I would think people in this country since 2016 have gotten much better at recognizing this stuff. But some are going to be fooled, no question," he says.

Voting security

One large topic influenced by mis-and-disinformation is voting security.

Thomas, along with Upton and Schauer, spoke extensively on the safeguards to prevent any sort of voter fraud.

Thomas says that in the last century, little attention was paid to how votes were counted, "and then Florida hit, right?"

In 2000 the election between Al Gore and George W. Bush hung on "hanging chads," bits of paper stuck to punchcard-like ballots for "an election that's decided by 500-and-some votes." Suddenly, "The nation woke up to elections and how elections were run," Thomas says. "We have a voter registration system now that's really an election management system."

In 2002, the system turned to ink on paper ballots and optical scanners. When recounts happen, the paper ballots are counted, Thomas says.

In 2020, no-reason absentee ballots became a major source of votes. Absentee ballots are monitored within the system, Thomas says, to catch irregularities. Signatures are inspected, comparing those on absentee ballots with signatures on the voter's driver's license. If there's an issue, voters are contacted and given a chance to "cure" their ballot, to correct the issue and have their vote counted.

(A few days after the panel, on Oct. 4, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced that seven people were charged in a double-voting effort for the August primary, where allegedly voters voted absentee, and then voted at the polls. "Whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican or an Independent; a first-time voter or long-time voter, you only get one vote. It is the job of our dedicated public servants to ensure this basic tenant of our democratic system is followed," Nessel said.)

If one has suspicions of shenanigans during elections, then, as Thomas says, "Citizens ought to become election inspectors. Almost every clerk's looking for them."

Both Democrat and Republican inspectors are required for elections. "In Detroit, we're looking for Republican election inspectors.... And there are areas on this side of the state where it's hard to find Democratic election inspectors," Thomas says.

"But that's where you go, particularly if you have doubts. Step up. Sit down at the table. Learn the process and make your decision. Become a challenger with your political party or with some of the other groups that put challengers out there."

Thomas says that during the mid-terms of 2022, in Detroit, "We had a good complement of Republican inspectors. And we had certainly a good complement of Republican challengers. And they were the most bored people after days that went until two in the morning. Because there was nothing to see," he says.

"But their presence is important... If each one of those people go back to their family and say, 'Hey, here's what I saw,' which wasn't a lot of anything, you know sooner or later that word starts to spread."

However, it's not exactly hot news when something works as it should. Thomas notes that "there wasn't any big announcement from the Republican Party that they didn't see anything after 2022. But, in essence, there was also not an announcement that they saw something. And that's important."

Promote the Vote

The three agreed that Michigan's current system of voting has increased participation in elections.

This is despite the figures moderator Jeff Breneman, WMU Vice President of Government Relations, brought out.

For the past 60 years, Pew Research has asked the same question, Breneman says. Do Americans "trust the government to do what is right, just about always, or most of the time?"

In 1964 77% had some trust in government. The number has fallen to 22% in 2024. 

Thomas says Michigan's elections system, for many years, "did a beautiful job with administration and security. Our qualified voter file, our statewide file, our voting systems, the protections we have are excellent."

He added, "But we could never get over the hump in terms of increasing access."

There were bills for no-reason absentee voting in Michigan going back to 1990, he says. "And just quite frankly, the Republican Party controlled the state Senate for 40 years. And they refused to implement no-reason absentee voting."

In 2015 Thomas told then-Secretary of State, Ruth Johnson, who was also a Republican who'd served in the Michigan House and Senate, "You might want to tell your friends over there that someday somebody's going to take that (absentee voting) to the ballot. And when they do, it's not just going to be for no-reason absentee," he says.

"And sure as heck, 2018, Promote the Vote went to the ballot."

The Promote the Vote petition drive led to Proposal 3, which passed with nearly 67% of the vote. It included no-excuse absentee voting, automatic voter registration when getting a driver's license, and the ability to register at the polls on election day, all now part of the Michigan Constitution. 

"They had election day registration! Now, there's nothing the Republican Party would hate more than that. I mean, oh my God!" Thomas says.

Michigan voters for the election of 2024 have nine days of early voting, including "two full weekends," as well as no-reason absentee ballots, by mail, postage paid. There are state-funded drop boxes, one for every 15,000 registered voters, Thomas says.

This resulted in a "tremendous jump" in voters, he says. 

Before the 2018 Promote the Vote proposal, presidential elections saw a turnout of "around 4.8 million" voters. "The gubernatorial elections were 3.2 (million). 

“In 2018, which was a gubernatorial election, we had 4.1 million. So about a million more than before."

In the presidential election of 2020, "instead of 4.8 million — in the middle of a pandemic — we had 5.5 million. That is huge, about 700,000 more people voted. In 2022, another gubernatorial election, we had 4.3 million. So this has been an upward trend line."

Thomas adds, "Sometimes when everybody's singing ‘Kumbaya’ and everyone's happy, it may go back down again, which is okay, you know if everybody's happy with things. But with what's going on now, people are locked in, they're paying attention, and they're going to turn out."

The youth vote

Breneman points out that, though this was a talk held at the WMU Student Services building, few people in the audience looked like the average college student. Most in the room looked like "seasoned voters," he says to audience laughter.

Asked by Breneman about young and disenchanted voters, Schauer says, "For younger voters, there are so many issues that they care about, whether it's climate change, gun violence, equity, equality, human rights, reproductive freedom, what have you. And I just think we need to help them find sources of information where they can find candidates that they can believe in."

He then points out the Promote the Vote effort, and says with emphasis, "It is easy to vote!"

"I think young people have the future of our country in their hands," Schauer says. "It is time to hand over the reins to our country. Our job as elders should be to make sure there is a plan that our grandkids can inherit, that there is a society that they can believe in and be proud of."

As a member of Former Members of Congress, Upton has been doing a lot of talks like this one on campuses, Upton says. He’s discovering that the youth are moving out of the reputation that "they didn't really vote all that often. I'm convinced that it's going to be the other way around."

Thomas says, "You know what your parents told you the first time you jumped in the swimming pool? 'Plug your nose and jump in.' That's what I would tell young people. And it won't be your only time."