Dispensary Owner Accused of Bribing Michigan Voters

As one of many states that allows the use of medicinal marijuana, Michigan is home to many collectives and dispensaries. One such dispensary, Your Healthy Choice Clinic, is now at risk of being shut down due to the actions of its owner.

Your Healthy Choice Clinic, located in the city of Lansing, is owned by Shekina Pena. Pena, in an attempt to motivate the community to exercise their civic rights, offered a free half-gram of marijuana, or a free edible, to anyone who registered to vote at her dispensary.

Pena claims that her motives behind this offer were not to encourage voters to vote for a specific candidate, but rather to vote, period. Encouraging people to register, and even providing an incentive, is not illegal under state or federal law, however, providing material incentive to vote for a specific candidate is illegal.

Pena maintains that she is not guilty of “influencing voters with money or other valuable consideration,” which is a misdemeanor. She asserts that she is being publicly attacked for political reasons, rather than legal ones, and plans on fighting the charges in court.

What she did is actually a very creative way of encouraging people to express their voice. With only a small percentage of voting age citizens casting ballots, getting the majority to vote is a struggle in the current political and economic atmosphere.

This case starts to look a little sketchier, however, when we discover that Pena provided a list of candidates that the clinic supports along with her free products. When considering this, we see that her primary motivation may not have been simple registration, but rather to advertise certain City Council contenders.

It is more likely, however, that Pena encouraged registration and then provided information to unknowledgeable voters. It can be assumed that a person who is not registered will be ignorant of current candidates; so providing information on current runners would be a good idea. But shouldn’t she have provided information on all candidates, instead of just a few? Only the courts can decide for sure.