The anemic turnout in (the Aug. 2) primary election is a reminder that Michigan maintains some of the country’s most restrictive voting laws.

As lawmakers in most states experiment with innovations designed to boost registration and participation in the democratic process, Michigan’s Republican-controlled Legislature has not only resisted such reforms, but added obstacles calculated to suppress voter turnout.

Ours is one of just 13 states (along with historical voting rights scofflaws such as Mississippi and Alabama) that permit neither early voting nor no-reason absentee-voting.

And state legislators here have looked on with disinterest as other states passed legislation to register voters automatically when they qualify for a driver’s license, grant permanent absentee status to housebound residents, and permit all-mail voting.

Which if any of these initiatives might reverse a nationwide decline in electoral participation remains to be seen. But at least other states are trying. Michigan lawmakers seem perversely determined to make voting as inconvenient as possible, especially in densely populated cities where Democratic voters abound.

Certainly that’s what Republican legislators had in mind when they voted to abolish straight-ticket voting – a mechanism Michigan voters have endorsed in two separate statewide referenda – in the closing hours of the 2015 legislative session. An amendment that would have softened the blow by expanding absentee voter eligibility was stripped at the last minute, to the embarrassment of its Republican sponsor.

A federal judge has since enjoined the state from enforcing the straight-ticket voting ban on the grounds that it will have a disproportionate impact on African-American voters in Detroit, where the elimination of the straight-ticket voting was anticipated to dramatically increase waiting lines at the polls. U.S. District Judge Gershwin Drain’s ruling is only one in a deluge of recent federal court decisions striking down voter suppression initiatives across the country.

States that are interested in promoting rather than discouraging the exercise of voting rights have adopted a number of promising strategies:

Early voting, also known as in-person absentee voting, enables voters to cast ballots as much as 45 days before a scheduled election. Some 37 states and the District of Columbia offer their voters an early-voting option, giving residents an average of 22 days within which to go to the polls.

No-reason absentee voting provides those who wish to avoid Election Day lines with a mechanism to obtain and return their ballots in advance even if they are physically capable of voting in their own precinct. More than half the states allow no-excuse absentee ballots, and five of those – Florida, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota and Utah – let voters submit applications for such ballots online.

Vote-by-mail states allow voters to participate in at least some elections without leaving their homes. Colorado, Oregon and Washington conduct all their elections by mail, dispatching ballots by post to every registered voter. Some 19 other states offer some variant of mail voting in some elections.

If Michigan hopes ever to achieve the top 10 status its leaders ostensibly aspire to, Lansing will have to stop depending on federal judges to protect its voters from disenfranchisement and join state lawmakers elsewhere in adopting strategies to encourage electoral participation.

– The Detroit Free Press