A Michigan canvasser said he might not certify the election. Now the ACLU is suing him. | Hayley Harding/Votebeat
The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan is suing a member of the Kalamazoo County Board of Canvassers, hoping a judge will declare that the man must certify the November election results, after a newspaper reported him saying that he might not. The suit is part of a growing legal effort around the country to ensure that the November election is certified on time by making it clear to any potentially defiant officials that they’re not allowed to refuse to certify, and that they could face charges or penalties if they do. The ACLU suit follows a Detroit News report that Robert Froman, a 73-year-old Republican canvasser in Kalamazoo County, said he would not certify the 2024 presidential election if it went the same way as the 2020 election, which he believed was stolen from former President Donald Trump. Read ArticleMichigan: In small towns, even GOP clerks are targets of election conspiracies | Matt Vasilogambros/Stateline
Deep in the thumb of Michigan’s mitten-shaped Lower Peninsula, Republican election officials are outcasts in their rural communities. Michigan cities already were familiar with the consequences of election conspiracy theories. In 2020, Republicans flooded Detroit’s ballot counting center looking for fraud. Democratic and Republican election officials faced an onslaught of threats. And conservative activists attempted to tamper with election equipment. But the clerks who serve tiny conservative townships around Lake Huron never thought the hatred would be directed toward them. “I’m telling you — I’ve heard about everything I could hear,” said Theresa Mazure, the clerk for the 700 residents of Hume Township in Huron County. “I just shake my head. And when you try to explain, all I hear is, ‘Well, that’s just the Democrats talking.’ No, it’s the democratic process.” Read ArticleMichigan: Big wins for GOP candidates who spread election falsehoods | Hayley Harding/Votebeat
A self-proclaimed “constitutional sheriff,” a township clerk facing felony charges, and a county clerk candidate who wants to “hand count every ballot cast at the end of each voting day” sailed through their Republican primaries Tuesday, earning themselves spots on November’s ballot and likely victory. The results are a sign that many local voters in more conservative areas of Michigan don’t consider it disqualifying for local elected officials to spread conspiracy theories or interfere with elections to advance the narrative that the 2020 election was stolen from then-President Donald Trump. In Barry County, north of Kalamazoo, incumbent Sheriff Dar Leaf handily beat three GOP challengers. In Macomb County, Shelby Township Clerk Stan Grot did the same. Victoria Bishop, a clerk candidate in Antrim County, claimed victory in a five-way GOP race with about 37% of the vote. Read ArticleMichigan: Power outages and humid ink barely mar a smooth day of voting in low turnout primary | Hayley Harding/Votebeat
Even after nine days of early voting and 40 days to return absentee ballots, Michigan’s August primary appeared to be a relatively low turnout election. Officials said the majority of voters had already cast their ballots before election day on Tuesday. As of Monday, more than 1 million people across the state had voted, the vast majority of them doing so absentee. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said Tuesday night that she expected totals to be near 2 million, which would be less than a quarter of the state’s total registered voters. In 2022, there were more than 2.1 million votes cast in Michigan’s August primary. Four years ago, there were more than 2.5 million votes cast. Read ArticleMichigan faces a shortage of local clerk candidates, raising alarms about how elections will be run | Jon King/Michigan Advance
They are the administrators of democracy, making sure that elections are free, fair and efficient. They maintain the records of local government and are responsible for public access to those records, including births, deaths and the marriages in between. And yet, nearly 10% of the 1,240 township clerk positions that are up for election this year in Michigan have no candidates willing to step up and fill them. That’s according to Canton Township Clerk Michael Siegrist, who also serves as second vice president of the Michigan Association of Municipal Clerks (MAMC). In a social media post this month, Siegrist pointed to the situation as one that’s not been experienced before. “What if I told you that 118 townships have nobody running for Clerk this year. We’ve never seen anything like this in history. 9.5% of all clerk races this year will have NOBODY elected,” he said, before posing a series of questions. “Why doesn’t anyone want to do this job? How does a state deal with such a massive labor shortage? Who will run elections in these communities?” Read ArticleMichigan has fix in place after brief outage in early-voter check-in system | Hayley Harding/Votebeat
An overloaded server briefly brought Michigan’s voter check-in system to a crawl Saturday morning, a hiccup on the first day of early in-person voting in the state primary that Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson says she is “confident” won’t happen again. The error was the result of other applications running on the same server that also hosted the state’s electronic poll books, Benson said during a news conference Monday. When voting started, those hundreds of poll book connections plus those other applications “caused a spike in activity” that tied up the servers and forced clerks around the state to temporarily switch to paper voter records. The Secretary of State’s Office worked with the Department of Technology, Management and Budget to discuss a solution that prioritizes early voting over other applications and protects access to the servers, Benson said. Read ArticleMichigan: Trump campaign sues Gretchen Whitmer to block veteran voter registration sites | Griffin Eckstein/Salon
Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has filed a lawsuit against Michigan officials, including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, to block a directive to designate Veterans Affairs offices and other public facilities as voter registration sites. Per the lawsuit, filed Monday, the Trump campaign seeks a "permanent injunction barring the state … from designating any VRAs [voter registration agencies] without express authorization from the Michigan Legislature." The directive — which would have instituted registration offices in Michigan Veterans Affairs, Worker’s Disability Compensation Agency and U.S. Small Business Administration offices — would have enabled Michiganders to check, update, and join the voter rolls more easily. Read ArticleMichigan judge calls off hearing on alleged voter data breach to allow for appeal | Craig Mauger/The Detroit News
A Hillsdale County judge suddenly called off a preliminary examination scheduled for Thursday morning to allow a former township clerk and lawyer, facing felony charges over an alleged voter data breach, to fight the allegations in a higher court. After district court Judge Megan Stiverson announced her decision, Richard Cunningham, the prosecutor in the cases for the Michigan Attorney General's office, could be heard telling others in the courtroom that he was "shocked." Two days earlier on Tuesday, Stiverson rejected a motion to immediately dismiss the charges from Dan Hartman, the attorney who's representing former Adams Township Clerk Stephanie Scott and Stefanie Lambert, a lawyer involved in efforts to advance unproven election fraud claims in multiple battleground states. In her ruling, Stiverson specifically said the preliminary examination to decide whether the charges should proceed to trial would go forward "as scheduled" Thursday. However, at the start of the hearing, Hartman revealed that he wanted to challenge Stiverson's Tuesday order in Hillsdale County Circuit Court. Read ArticleMichigan: What cost comparisons show about early in-person voting models | Tom Perkins/Votebeat
The city of Ann Arbor recorded one of the state’s highest rates of early in-person voting in the February primary, and a Votebeat analysis shows it also succeeded in another important measure: It kept the cost per vote low. Ann Arbor spent about $19 per early in-person vote, among the lowest of dozens of municipalities included in the analysis, which gauged only recurring costs like labor. In Lansing, a city similar in size to Ann Arbor, the cost per vote was triple — around $58 — and the turnout rate much lower. Meanwhile, in sparsely populated Ontonagon County in the Upper Peninsula, municipal election officials banded together under a countywide plan. Ontonagon County spent about $63 per vote, though that cost was spread among a dozen municipalities. Read ArticleMichigan Supreme Court weighs legality of Secretary of State’s guidance on election challengers | Beth LeBlanc/The Detroit News
Michigan Supreme Court justices will decide in the coming weeks whether guidelines issued by Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to govern the handling of challengers at polling places can withstand the scrutiny of Republican opponents. Justices heard about an hour of argument Tuesday over Zoom on a case that challenges a manual issued by Benson to clerks in 2022 that set out instructions for election challengers, including a uniform credential form for challengers, limits on when their challenges should be recorded and bans on electronic device possession in closed-door absentee voting counting rooms while polling precincts are open. Several election challengers and the state and national Republican parties filed suit soon after the guidelines were issued, arguing they conflict with state election law and constituted rules that should have gone through the rulemaking process. Read ArticleMichigan Judge Largely Denies RNC’s Challenge To Absentee Ballot Signature Matching Rules | Rachel Selzer/Democracy Docket
A Michigan judge today largely rejected the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) bid to tighten the state’s instructions for verifying signatures on absentee ballot applications and return envelopes ahead of the 2024 election. As a result of today’s ruling, election officials in the consequential battleground state may continue to apply most of the current signature matching rules promulgated by Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D). Election officials cannot, however, utilize a slightly more lenient standard contained in the state’s guidance — known as a “presumption of validity” — when verifying signatures, the judge concluded. Read ArticleMichigan clerks hit with ‘new reality’ as activists seek voting records in lawsuits | Craig Mauger/The Detroit News
Activists, pursuing unproven, yet lingering claims that something is fundamentally wrong with Michigan's election system, are turning to the courts in the battleground state to try to get access to voting records. At least 18 clerks or local officeholders, across two counties, have been sued over the past year for rejecting Freedom of Information Act requests from people seeking data on voters. In rural Barry County, Irving Township Deputy Clerk Shelly Lake sued clerks from three other townships after trying to obtain past qualified voter lists, according to court records. In Macomb County, Michigan's third-most populous county, Michael Butz, a 60-year-old retiree from Bruce Township, sued 15 clerks or local officials after asking for data from electronic poll books, which account for eligible voters and their assigned ballots for specific elections in specific precincts. Read Article