Republicans say most Michigan counties have more voters than voting-age people

The Republican National Committee (RNC) on Friday demanded that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson do more to clean up the state's voter rolls, claiming that a recent analysis showed 55 of the state's 83 counties have more registered voters than adults over the age of 18.

The RNC — which said it would take legal action if necessary to try to force Benson to purge dead or otherwise ineligible votes from the rolls ahead of the 2024 elections — also said 23 other counties had voter registration rates accounting for 90% or more of those counties' voting age population, "a figure that far eclipses the voter registration rate nationwide in recent elections."

RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, a former state Republican Party chairwoman, in a statement to the Free Press, chastised Benson for not doing more to make sure the voter rolls are accurate, saying Benson has "failed in her obligation" to the public.

"More than 50 Michigan counties have a 100% or higher rate of voter registration," she said. "This is mathematically impossible and means that ineligible voters are on the rolls ahead of the upcoming 2024 election. The RNC is demanding that Michigan ensure only eligible voters can vote and will take legal action to ensure that outcome if necessary.”

A letter sent to Benson Friday said allowing voter rolls to remain "bloated with ineligible voters" raises the risk of election fraud and "undermines public confidence in elections." Voter fraud, which is a felony punishable by up to four years in prison and a fine of up to $2,000, is rare in Michigan and elsewhere, however. Past GOP claims, including those that thousands of mail-in ballots were cast in Wayne County on behalf of dead voters in the 2020 election, turned out to be false.

Former President Donald Trump also maintained in pressing baseless claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent, that Detroit counted more votes than it had residents, which was entirely false. That said, as of last year's election, Detroit had more registered voters — 508,535 — than its estimated voting-age population, which was 466,379.

Benson declined to respond to the claims Friday because her office is already engaged in a lawsuit on a similar claim brought two years ago by the Virginia-based Public Interest Legal Foundation, arguing that the secretary of state hasn't done enough to make sure deceased voters are removed from the voting rolls. But her spokeswoman, Angela Benander, said: "Michigan’s voter registration rolls are more accurate than ever and maintained in accordance with the law."

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The RNC analysis listed all of the counties it said had questionable registration numbers, including Kalkaska and Keweenaw counties, where voter registrations were 115% of the voting-age populations, the highest totals in the state. The state's largest counties — Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and Kent — also all topped 100%, according to the RNC's analysis.

The Free Press did not independently verify all of the claims in the RNC analysis. But a look at voter registration totals kept by the Secretary of State's office did indicate higher voter registration totals than voting-age population estimates made by the Census in 2021 for those counties just mentioned.

In Wayne County, for instance, the estimated voting age population was 1,354,533 and the number of registered voters is 1,428,007.

But there can be many innocent reasons for ineligible voters to remain on voter rolls, including the lapse of time between the Social Security Administration notifying election officials that a voter has died and a voter moving but failing to immediately update his or her driver's license, which triggers a change in where they are registered.

RNC gives Benson 45 days to respond with plan for purging voters

The claim of widespread voter roll inaccuracies was included in the letter sent Friday to Benson and state Elections Director Jonathan Brater by Consovoy McCarthy, a Virginia law firm that represents the RNC. It said unless Benson details, within 45 days, a plan for her office and local clerks to identify and remove ineligible voters, a suit could be brought; identifying two Republicans in the state, Jordan Jorritsma and Emerson Silvernail, both of whom have worked as legislative staffers in Lansing, as potential plaintiffs to a case.

The letter specifically called for a voter list maintenance program that removes the names of voters who are dead, incarcerated or ineligible to vote where they are registered because they have moved.

"As the chief election officials for Michigan, the responsibility rests with you to coordinate and oversee the list maintenance activities of local and county election officials," the letter said.

While the risk of voter fraud is low, there are good reasons to keep voter rolls accurate, says the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, established in 2002 to help election officials conduct their duties. Key among them are bolstering election integrity and voter confidence in the outcome and helping election officials to better plan for the actual number of voters likely to turn out.

Michigan has a system in place for maintaining accurate voter registration rolls that includes removing dead voters and detecting when voters move to a different location, but no system is considered 100% effective in removing ineligible voters. As part of that system, county clerks can cancel dead voters' registrations and those of inactive voters who haven't voted in at least two general elections and fail to return a notice that their registrations may be canceled.

At present, 499,912 inactive voter registrations in Michigan are set to be canceled next year, according to the Secretary of State's office.

The RNC, which also has recently raised similar questions about voter rolls in Nevada, said it made its analysis by comparing the annual estimates of county populations done by the Census Bureau for 2021 with voter registration totals kept by the Michigan Secretary of State's Elections Division.

The Nevada Secretary of State's office questioned the RNC's analysis in that state and also noted that it's the job of local clerks and registrars to maintain accurate voter rolls, though the Secretary of State's office assists them in that task. Both Michigan and Nevada are key swing states expected to be pivotal in the outcome of next year's elections.

In the letter to Benson sent Friday, the law firm noted that the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) requires states to take "reasonable" steps to maintain accurate and current voter registration rolls.

The Justice Department, in its information about the NVRA, says that includes "identifying persons who have become ineligible due to having died or moved outside the jurisdiction," though the NVRA also says that any program to purge voter names from the rolls be "uniform, non-discriminatory, in compliance with the Voting Rights Act, and not be undertaken within 90 days of a federal election."

Contact Todd Spangler: tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@tsspangler. Staff writer Clara Hendrickson contributed to this story.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Republicans say Michigan voter rolls rife with ineligible voters