What do you do when you aren’t representing the people and they’re starting to get wise to you? You make it harder for them to recall you.

That’s what the Michigan Republicans did this morning.

Amid a flurry of lame duck ALEC based legislation they passed, including allowing concealed weapons in schools, churches, arenas, hospitals and more (that they passed this on the eve of the Connecticut elementary school shooting tragedy appears to have caused no shame), weakening abortion rights, restricting medical marijuana, and taking away collective bargaining from unions, Michigan Republicans also passed legislation aimed at creating a safety net for their theft of democracy.

It is now harder to recall your lawmakers, the governor and local officials, as if it isn’t hard enough already. There is both a shorter time for signature gathering and you now have to have a primary with an opponent rather than an up and down vote on a recall.

Michigan Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer (D-East Lansing) asked Republicans, “Why are you making it more difficult to recall an officeholder? We are willing to work on this with you. Yet you jam it through in dark of night on the last night of a lame-duck session… You’re trying to inoculate yourselves from a recall.”

This move echoes the propaganda Republicans sold in Wisconsin, that recalls are not the way to “express” yourself. “Recalls shouldn’t be used for disagreeing with a vote.”