September 11 -- Flight 93: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Resolve

By Patrice Johnson, Founder and Chair, Michigan Fair Elections Institute & Pure Integrity Michigan Elections

September 11, 2026

After 21 days in the hospital, including time in the Intensive Care Unit, I came home to more emails, texts, and get-well cards than I can properly answer. One of my nurses told me his job was to keep me "of this Earth." I'm here today because of him and the rest of the healthcare workers who did exactly that. And I'm here because of you, because this community held things together. That's no small thing.

Twenty-five years ago today on September 11, 2001, forty passengers and crew boarded United Flight 93 expecting an ordinary flight. They were headed home to their families, to work, or vacation. Instead, their plane was hijacked, and they had a window of maybe thirty minutes to decide who they were going to be.

They had no weapons, no training, no command authority. They had only each other, the facts as they understood them, and the will to act before the clock timed out. "Let's roll" became their rallying cry.

This week carries a second weight, too. Yesterday marked one year since Charlie Kirk was shot and killed on a college campus in Utah. He was doing the same thing so many of us try to do: to show up in public, make a case for election integrity, and have an open discussion with people who might disagree.

Kirk’s assassination itself was an attack on the idea that citizens have a right to discuss ideas in the public square instead of resorting to violence to settle differences. Twenty-five years apart, Flight 93 and Kirk's death are both reminders of what's at stake when the idea of free speech comes under threat, and of the high price people sometimes pay to defend it.

Those forty passengers, Charlie Kirk, 9/11 firefighters, and volunteers in MFEI and PIME share a common thread. None of us boarded this flight expecting to land where we are today. Most of us didn't set out to become experts in qualified voter file structures, FOIA procedure, or constitutional law. Life put us on this flight.

Once we saw what's in the record — the mismatches, the retention violations, the gaps between what the law requires and what's actually occurring — we're the same as those passengers in row 30-something. We know, and knowing means we can no longer sit still.

That's what this organization was built on, one volunteer at a time. Nobody is coming to ensure fair elections for us. No single authority is going to do this work if people like us aren’t willing to look closely and do the work ourselves. So, we examine, county by county, record by record, election by election, and we bring facts to light.

Our work isn't dramatic. Most days it's spreadsheets and statutes and long hours at the expense of time with our families. But it's the same instinct that drove those passengers and Charlie Kirk to assess the situation with clear eyes, form a plan, and act.

They chose heroic action.

Twenty-five years after 9/11 and one year after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, "let's roll" still applies to the shared courage of people doing their civic duty in MFEI, PIME, and across this great state. Thank you for rising to the occasion.