Michigan

Michigan election officials say there is room for improvement in signature petition review process | Ben Solis/Michigan Advance

In testimony before a state House select committee, Michigan election officials defended the integrity of the state’s long-standing signature verification sampling process while acknowledging potential areas for administrative improvement. The inquiry follows a deadlocked Board of State Canvassers vote that blocked a Republican-backed voter proof-of-citizenship initiative after a random 1,000-signature sample fell just short of the statutory validation threshold. State election directors and board members expressed openness to extending petition review timelines and reforming strict compliance rules. Read Article

A top Michigan clerk is quitting. She can’t take the voting lies anymore | Ron French/Bridge Michigan

Persistent election conspiracy theories and public hostility are fueling a clerk retention crisis across Michigan's local jurisdictions. Despite managing highly secure, multi-step processes like mandatory public tabulator accuracy tests, township clerks face ongoing harassment, accusatory phone calls, and false claims of vote manipulation. The resulting strain has led award-winning local administrators to resign and contributed to a statewide candidate shortage, leaving ten township clerk positions completely vacant on the November ballot. Read Article

Michigan: Effort to recall Antrim County Clerk accused of changing voters’ registration statuses gets go-ahead from state board | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

The Michigan Board of State Canvassers has approved recall petition language against Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop, giving organizers the green light to begin gathering signatures to force a recall vote. The approved petition stems from allegations that Bishop overstepped her statutory authority by making unauthorized changes to the state's Qualified Voter File, which led the Michigan Bureau of Elections to suspend her system access earlier this year. Read Article

Michigan: US Supreme Court refuses to put proof-of-citizenship amendment on ballot | Kelsey Reichmann/Courthouse News Service

The Supreme Court refused to take emergency action Thursday to put a proof-of-citizenship amendment on Michigan ballots for the midterm elections. Americans for Citizen Voting asked the justices to intervene after the Michigan Board of State Canvassers invalidated its proposal despite surpassing the signature threshold. The group also asked the Supreme Court to act before the state’s highest court weighed in, to meet the quickly approaching deadline to make ballot changes. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, a Donald Trump appointee, denied the application without referring the appeal to the full court. He did not explain his decision. “If respondents’ decision to keep ACVM’s petition off the ballot stands, then Michigan voters will never have a chance to vote on the petition, regardless of whether it should or should not have been placed on the ballot,” Americans for Citizen Voting wrote. “On the other hand, if ACVM’s petition is placed on the ballot and ACVM’s arguments ultimately fail, there will be no harm. The choice is thus between irreparable harm and no harm at all.” Read Article

Michigan Attorney General charges 5 noncitizens who allegedly committed voter fraud in 2024 election | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

Michigan’s attorney general announced Thursday she was charging five noncitizens for allegedly voting in the 2024 general election, plus one U.S. citizen accused of registering their noncitizen spouse to vote. Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, made the announcement more than a year after her office announced she was investigating 13 potential noncitizen voters referred by the Michigan Department of State. Thursday’s announcement encompassed those referrals as well as 25 other people referred more recently on similar allegations. In addition to the six who were charged, 10 of those cases have been closed without charges, and 22 remain under investigation. In addition, the voter registration of every identified noncitizen — including several who were not charged — has been cancelled. Read Article

Michigan: Antrim County clerk and her husband cleared of ‘criminal wrongdoing’ in computer case | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

Embattled Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop and her husband, a conservative talk radio host best known as Trucker Randy, won’t face charges after she left him alone with her government computer. In February, a county maintenance worker reported that Randy Bishop was sitting in the clerk’s office unsupervised watching a public video stream of a county commission meeting on the office computer. This led to concerns that he could have used the computer to access sensitive information, including the Qualified Voter File, the central database that contains Michigan’s voter roll and can only be accessed by election officials. Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a news release Thursday that her office found “no evidence of criminal wrongdoing” or that anyone had tried to access the QVF from that computer at that time. The investigation found that the clerk likely did allow her husband to use her computer — which matches what they later told the Michigan State Police — but that no sensitive county files were touched, either. Read Article

Michigan voter file glitch slows absentee ballot processing | Dana Afana/Detroit Free Press

The Michigan Department of State reported a "tech issue" affecting the Qualified Voter File across multiple cities, though it did not affect voters casting their ballots for Michigan's August primary election, according to department spokeswoman Angela Benander. Benander said the department was made aware of the outage at about 5:30 p.m. However, as of about 6:30 p.m., the issue had been resolved. It is unclear which jurisdictions were affected. The outage affected the counting of absentee ballots, Benander said, adding that the system was processing the ballots and voter registrations at a slower pace. She said she does not expect the outage to significantly delay results. Outage slows processing of Michigan absentee ballots

Michigan: Trump resurrects debunked Muskegon voter fraud allegations after prior investigations | Katherine Dailey/Michigan Advance

In the middle of President Donald Trump’s primetime speech on Thursday, he pointed to Muskegon to demonstrate what he called “evidence of alleged fraud by a large-scale voter registration operation in Michigan” during the 2020 election cycle. The allegations, which Trump called “pay, play and cheat,” were investigated by both state-level agencies and the FBI, and local officials have repeatedly confirmed that it did not result in any illegal ballots being sent out or illegal votes being cast. The allegations surround a number of voter registrations received by the Muskegon City Clerk’s Office in October 2020, which were flagged as fraudulent based on non-existent addresses, invalid telephone numbers or signatures that did not match records. That was referred to and investigated by the Michigan State Police, Muskegon Police Department and Michigan Department of the Attorney General, who then reported it to the FBI office in Detroit. Read Article

Michigan: Trump cites suspect 2020 Muskegon voter registrations in election security speech | Todd Spangler/Detroit Free Press

Addressing the nation on the subject of election security, President Donald Trump suggested an FBI investigation into alleged voter registration fraud in Muskegon in 2020 was "buried and covered up" and instructed his administration to take it back up six years later. But documents the Trump administration itself declassified as the president was speaking on Thursday, July 16, seemed to indicate that federal officials continued to look into the case for years while Trump was out of office, interviewing witnesses and comparing applications with state records. It was only in September 2025 − eight months after Trump's second, nonconsecutive term began − that the Grand Rapids field office concluded that "no criminal violation or priority threat to national security" had been identified. Those documents also seemed to suggest that no voters had been paid to register to vote but that an employee or employees of a voter registration firm may have submitted falsely completed applications. If they did so, the documents suggested, it likely occurred not as a rampant scam to alter an election outcome but as an attempt by the employee or employees to appear more productive than they otherwise may have been and perhaps receive a bonus. Read Article

Michigan: DOJ says it will monitor primary elections | Craig Mauger/The Detroit News

President Donald Trump's Department of Justice has informed Michigan officials it intends to send election monitors to three cities in the battleground state for the Aug. 4 primary. Letters from the federal department about the plans have mentioned Detroit, Lansing and East Lansing, said two sources who had knowledge of the messages but spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss them publicly. All three cities are Democratic strongholds. Detroit is Michigan's largest city. Lansing and East Lansing, which is home to Michigan State University, are located in the swing 7th U.S. House District, where Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett of Charlotte is seeking a second term in November but faces no primary opponent. Read Article

Michigan: Appeals court rejects Trump administration’s effort to get sensitive voter information | Melissa Quinn/CBS

A divided federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that the Justice Department is not entitled to Michigan's voter registration list containing sensitive information from voters in the state. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit is now the first appeals court to weigh in on the Trump administration's efforts to obtain the unredacted voter rolls from more than two dozen states. At issue in the case decided by the 6th Circuit is the Justice Department's demand for the information from Michigan. In a 2-1 decision, the 6th Circuit said a provision of federal civil rights law does not entitle the government to Michigan's voter registration list, which contains the names, birth dates, driver's license numbers and partial Social Security numbers of all registered voters in the state, among other information. Read Article

Michigan revokes Antrim County clerk’s access to voter roll after unauthorized cancellations | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

The Michigan Bureau of Elections revoked Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop’s access to Michigan’s voter roll Friday, the latest salvo in the dispute between the state and the controversial Republican election official. Jonathan Brater, Michigan’s director of elections, said in a letter to Bishop that she is “taking actions ... that do not comply with the Michigan Election Law and fall outside the scope of your statutory authority” after she allegedly changed or even canceled some voters’ registrations earlier this year. Under Michigan law, maintaining the Qualified Voter File — the state’s central database of registered voters — is the job of city and township clerks, not county clerks. Brater noted in his letter that Bishop does “not have authority to alter QVF records except in certain situations,” including to flag voters who have died. However, Brater wrote, the state’s review of Bishop’s QVF activity found that that was not what she was doing. He also reprimanded her for sending notices to voters about the cancellations that were insufficiently complete, based on unreliable information, and also supposed to be sent only by city and township clerks. Read Article

Michigan: Lawyers who sought to overturn 2020 election face misconduct hearing | Craig Mauger/The Detroit News

Nearly 2,000 days after a group of lawyers attempted to reverse President Donald Trump's loss in Michigan's 2020 election, they've been quietly facing professional misconduct hearings on the 17th floor of an office building in downtown Detroit. The proceedings, which began previously and continued Thursday, have been playing out with Trump, a Republican, back in the White House after he won in 2024 and as he has continued to spread unsubstantiated theories of fraud about his 2020 defeat. About 10 people were in a small meeting room Thursday as a panel, appointed by Michigan's Attorney Discipline Board, considered testimony about the unsuccessful 2020 suit that was publicly championed by Texas lawyer Sidney Powell. She once described the national legal push to challenge the election as releasing the "kraken." Read Article

Michigan: Department of Justice demands voter registration lists at appeals court | Kevin Koeninger/Courthouse News Service

State election officials must provide unredacted, electronic versions of voter registration lists to the federal government to comply with the Civil Rights Act and maintain election integrity, the federal government argued Wednesday at the Sixth Circuit. Michigan’s Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson found herself in the crosshairs of the federal government in August 2025 after she refused its request for the state’s unredacted voter registration list. According to officials at the Department of Justice, several “irregularities” — including lower than average voter removal and inadequate voter confirmation numbers — raised concerns Michigan might not be in compliance with the National Voter Registration Act. Benson handed over the public version of the registration list but denied the government an unredacted copy based on her interpretation of both federal laws. Read Article

Michigan: Judge dismisses felony charges in Michigan election tampering case | Bridge Michigan

A Hillsdale County judge on Thursday dismissed felony charges against a former election clerk and attorney accused of allowing unauthorized access to voting equipment following the 2020 presidential election. A lower court made an “error of law” and “abused its discretion” when it ordered Stephanie Scott and Stefanie Lambert stand trial on related felony charges, Circuit Court Judge Sara Lisznyai wrote in an eight-page ruling. Scott was serving as Adams Township Clerk in 2021 when she refused to turn over a missing tabulator amid a quest to prove the prior year’s presidential election was rigged against Donald Trump. Lambert, of metro Detroit, served as her attorney at the time. Read Article

Michigan court tosses Republican suit challenging overseas voting for military spouses and children | Kyle Davidson/Michigan Advance

Michigan Court of Claims Judge Sima Patel on Wednesday dismissed a challenge to Michigan election law brought by the Republican National Committee and the Michigan Republican Party against Michigan’s secretary of state and director of elections. While the suit aimed to invalidate a state law that allowed the spouses and dependents of Michigan voters who are living abroad to cast a ballot in Michigan elections, Patel concluded that the law remains in line with the Michigan Constitution. The suit was one of many cases that Republicans have filed against Benson, with the Michigan Court of Appeals rejecting a similar case in 2025, centered on the same rules within the state Election Officials Manual. While the law does not require a servicemember’s spouse or child to have lived in Michigan in order to cast their ballot there, the RNC argued that the law stood at odds with language in the state’s governing document that states, “every citizen of the United States who has attained the age of 21 years, who has resided in this state six months, and who meets the requirements of local residence provided by law, shall be an elector and qualified to vote in any election except as otherwise provided in this constitution.” Read Article

Michigan: Antrim County voters confused after clerk attempts to cancel hundreds of voter registrations | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

Hundreds of voters have reportedly been affected by Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop’s attempt to cancel voter registrations in the small northern county, leaving voters confused and local clerks frustrated. The Michigan Bureau of Elections sent a letter to Bishop last week accusing her of improperly changing and canceling voter registrations. Such changes “fall outside the scope” of her authority as a county clerk, the bureau wrote, and failed “to comply with the law.” Michigan law puts municipal clerks, not county clerks, in charge of voter list maintenance. Bishop has until Thursday to respond to the state with an explanation of why she made the changes and lists of the affected voters. Read Article

Michigan Bureau of Elections says Antrim County clerk improperly changed, canceled voter registrations | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

The Michigan Bureau of Elections is demanding answers from a controversial county clerk who reportedly canceled or changed voters’ registrations when she wasn’t supposed to. The bureau sent a letter to Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop on Tuesday saying it had received information suggesting she had made voter registration changes “that fall outside the scope of your statutory authority and fail to comply with the law.” Bishop, a Republican, was first elected in 2024 on a platform of cleaning up Antrim County’s voter roll. She is associated with the wing of the Republican Party that claims the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald Trump. The bureau learned that Bishop, who took office in 2025, apparently sent confirmation and cancellation notices — essentially, notices sent by election officials when they believe a voter has moved — to an unknown number of voters who didn’t vote in the last two major elections. However, the bureau noted in the letter, “Michigan law is explicit that a clerk may not cancel, or cause the cancellation of, a voter’s registration solely because a voter has missed one or two elections.” Read Article

Michigan voter roll case could reach the Supreme Court first | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

Michigan was one of several states that refused to share its voter rolls with the federal government. Now, it may be the most likely to have to defend that decision in higher courts — potentially even the U.S. Supreme Court. The Justice Department has several appeals underway involving states that declined to share their voter rolls and initially prevailed in federal courts. Legal experts say the department may be seeking a ruling from the nation’s highest court before the November midterm elections — and Michigan’s case, because it is moving through a faster appellate circuit, could reach it first. “In Michigan, [the DOJ] filed an appeal within two days of the order appearing on the docket,” compared to much slower responses to other states, said Derek Clinger, senior counsel with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “There’s certainly evidence that they’re pushing the Michigan case the most.” Read Article

One of Michigan’s most populous counties will post all ballots online | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

Macomb County has begun to post online an image of every ballot cast in the pivotal swing county. The county, Michigan’s third most populous, is using a program called “Ballot Verifier” to upload scans of every ballot cast for anyone to see. More than 80,000 ballots from the November 2025 election are already online, as is the “cast vote record,” which shows how tabulators read each ballot.Images of cast ballots — which do not include a voter’s name, address, party affiliation, or other identifying information — are already public record and can be requested through local officials. Putting them online simply improves transparency, Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini said.“We all wonder, when we put our ballot in, ‘did it score it the right way?’” Read Article

Michigan: US Supreme Court declines to hear twice-dismissed case on Michigan voter rolls | Kyle Davidson/Michigan Advance

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case against Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, challenging the state’s process for canceling the voter registration for dead individuals. The suit was filed by the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative law firm which has filed suits in several states aimed at pushing election officials to aggressively purge their voter rolls. The group has previously made false claims about voter fraud in the U.S. In its suit against the Michigan Department of State, the group argued that the state does not properly maintain its voter rolls under the National Voter Registration Act, allowing thousands of deceased voters to remain on file. However, a U.S. District Court judge dismissed the suit, noting “the record demonstrates that deceased voters are removed from Michigan’s voter rolls on a regular and ongoing basis.” The decision was upheld by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, prior to the group’s appeal to the Supreme Court. Read Article

Michigan: Uncertainties facing election officials mount ahead of key election | Craig Mauger/The Detroit News

Michigan election officials are facing increasing scrutiny from some politicians and a presidential threat of federal intervention, which some expect to be attempted in the coming months, to begin the pivotal 2026 campaign year. Republican President Donald Trump has floated the idea of having federal officials take over local responsibilities for administering elections. He's also used social media to promote five-year-old and dubious claims of voter fraud centered on Michigan. A spokeswoman for Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said Friday that Michigan leaders were preparing for a "range of potential threats." Despite the array of pressures — including a push for funding for new equipment and a petition campaign on voter eligibility — some of the clerks who administer elections in Michigan's largest cities said they'll continue to be focused on ensuring the law is followed. "They will not betray their oath because of any type of effort by any elected official, whether it be Donald Trump or anyone else," said Michael Siegrist, the clerk in Wayne County's Canton Township. Read Article

Michigan governor’s budget proposal includes $43 million for new voting machines | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s proposed 2027-2028 budget includes more than $43 million for new voting equipment, an appropriation election officials across Michigan say is critical in keeping the state’s election infrastructure secure and up to date. The money is only a tiny portion of the $88.1 billion proposal Whitmer unveiled Wednesday. If approved, it will allow clerks to upgrade their machinery to the newest federal standards without forcing cities and townships to shoulder all the costs on their own. If that money doesn’t win approval from the Legislature, however, it could put a major crunch on local clerks who have already seen their elections budgets double or even triple in the last decade with recent expansions to voting procedures. Read Article

Michigan Secretary of State says flawed review risks disenfranchising eligible Michigan voters | Andrew Roth/Michigan Advance

Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson says some Michigan voters may be at risk of criminal investigation or having voter registration cancelled after a Republican county clerk made claims that he found proof of non-citizens voting in Michigan. She said an investigation into Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini’s allegations that he had identified 15 non-citizens who were registered to vote in Michigan returned mixed results. Of the 15 residents flagged by Forlini, the Bureau of Elections identified four apparent non-citizens who are registered to vote in Michigan. The Michigan Department of State will send them a letter asking to confirm their eligibility to vote and will cancel their registration if they don’t respond. Read 'Article

Michigan voters say signature gatherers lie about what proposals will do. Lawmakers haven’t fixed it. | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

College students across the state say they have been lied to by petition circulators, who have descended on their campuses to gather signatures in support of requiring Michigan voters to prove their citizenship. In August, Michigan State University freshman Abby Lindley was told the petition would make it easier for immigrants and transgender people to vote, she said. University of Michigan junior Aidan Rozema reported being told in September that it would make voting easier. In October, circulators told MSU freshman Hunter Moore it would expand absentee voting, he said. No law in Michigan requires circulators — often paid per signature — to tell the truth about what’s on a petition, or to show prospective signers the full text. While some states try to ensure accountability by banning per-signature pay or requiring circulators to live in-state, rules across the country are a patchwork. Read Article

Michigan: Embattled Hamtramck election official sues city amid disputed mayoral race | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

Amid a contested mayoral election marred by revelations of insecure ballots, the top election official in Hamtramck is suing several city officials, alleging they retaliated against her for trying to expose the city’s “ongoing election integrity issues.” City Clerk Rana Faraj has been on leave since Nov. 10, days after 37 ballots cast in the 2025 municipal election were initially misplaced in her office. Faraj’s lawsuit alleges that she was put on leave as a way to satisfy city officials who had a grudge against her “after being falsely accused of meddling with the election.” The lawsuit also provides more alleged details about the circumstances that led to the 37 ballots not being counted. The ballots may have been decisive in Hamtramck’s nonpartisan mayoral race, which was separated by only 11 votes after a recount last week. Rwad Article

Michigan court rules against Secretary of State’s election guidance: Mismatched mail-in ballots can’t be counted | Danielle James/mlive.com

The Michigan Court of Claims has ruled that guidance issued by Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson on counting absentee ballots with mismatched numbers is not valid. Ballots are typically prepared with a detachable stub at the top that has a unique identifying number. When ballots with these stubs are sent out to absentee voters, a local clerk will record the number on the stub assigned to that same voter in the qualified voter file (QVF). That number then corresponds with what is printed on the outside of the absentee ballot’s return envelope. In cases where absentee ballots are returned and the numbers don’t line up, Benson’s previous guidance to election officials was that they could process the ballots as “challenged.” The plaintiffs requested the court declare that guidance unlawful, arguing that absentee ballots should be rejected the same way that one of an in-person voter would be if there was a mismatch, or of an absentee voter whose signature could not be verified. Read Article

Michigan request tests limits on federal interference in elections | Carrie Levine/Votebeat

Earlier this month, a group of Republican state lawmakers in Michigan sent a letter asking the U.S. Justice Department to “deploy official election monitors and provide comprehensive oversight for Michigan’s 2026 primary and general elections.” Besides election monitors, which the Justice Department for years has deployed around the country to observe elections, the letter isn’t clear on what the Republican lawmakers mean by “comprehensive oversight,” or exactly what legal authority they believe would allow such an intervention. President Donald Trump and his allies have repeatedly pushed for more federal oversight of elections. In March, he issued a sweeping executive order that would overhaul the way elections are administered in many states, though federal courts have since blocked many of its provisions on the grounds that the Constitution doesn’t grant him such authority. His administration is appealing at least some of those decisions. Read Article

Michigan: Ballot custody questions complicate aftermath of Hamtramck election | Hayley Harding/Votebeat

Sometime in the hours after last week’s election in Hamtramck, officials who weren’t involved in elections walked into the city clerk’s office, a space that’s supposed to be a secure place to keep ballots. That revelation has thrown the outcome of the Michigan city’s entire election into doubt, including an exceedingly close mayoral race. A total of 37 absentee ballots were initially unaccounted for on election night but were later discovered in the clerk’s office, opened but not yet tabulated. But since those ballots were not secured and could have been accessed by others, it’s currently up in the air whether they will be included in the election’s final totals. Read Article