By The opinion
Mar 14, 2024, 01:40 AM EDT
The Republican National Committee (RNC) on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, to get the state to review its voter registration lists.
The committee alleges that the state “has not complied” with the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) requirement that voter registration lists they must be clean.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court, contends that of Michigan’s 83 counties, at least 53 have more registered voters than adults of legal voting age. Another 23 counties have active voter registration rates that “exceed 90 percent of adult citizens over the age of 18,” according to the lawsuit.
“This is not the first time that Michigan has failed to comply with the requirements of the NVRA,” the lawsuit said, citing a 2020 lawsuit against Michigan election officials who violated the law’s requirements, which it was later dismissed.
The RNC lawsuit comes just days after former President Trump’s allies assumed leadership positions and hours after the Republican Party confirmed that Trump was their candidate for the 2024 elections.
Michigan, a key swing state, voted for President Biden in the 2020 election. Biden won by 154,000 votes despite Trump’s attempt to urge officials not to certify the results.
Under the NVRA, states must conduct “a general voter registration list maintenance program” that makes a “reasonable effort” to remove ineligible people from voter rolls, due to death or moving out of state or jurisdiction. It also protects voters from being removed if they haven’t voted in years.
The maintenance program must be “uniform, non-discriminatory, and comply with the Voting Rights Act,” according to the Department of Justice.
How voter registrations are regulated
The United States voter registration system is designed for registration, not for elimination. The lists often include outdated records, since most voters are not removed from the system when they move or die.
And while federal law requires officials to take steps to keep lists up to date, they also protects voters from overzealous purges by requiring officials to wait years to remove a voter who has simply stopped casting a ballot.
Even so, there is no evidence that bloated voter lists lead to voter fraud, even as Republicans increasingly use the lists as a focus of their electoral activism and accusations of alleged fraud.
What the Michigan Secretary of State has said
Michigan’s secretary of state said in a statement to NBC News that Michigan has done more in the last five years than in the previous two decades to Accurately remove people from the list.
More than 700,000 people have been removed from the voter rolls since he took office and more will be removed if they do not vote in this fall’s general election, the outlet reported.
“Let’s call this what it is: a public relations campaign disguised as a meritless lawsuit filled with baseless accusations that seek to diminish people’s faith in the security of our elections,” Benson said in her statement to NBC News. “Shame on anyone who abuses the legal process to sow seeds of doubt in our democracy.”
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