Around 8.4 million people are registered to vote in Michigan , but that’s nearly 500,000 more people than the total number of voting-age...
Around 8.4 million people are registered to vote in Michigan, but that’s nearly 500,000 more people than the total number of voting-age residents in the state.
The inflated voter rolls in Michigan, a vital battleground state in the 2024 election, are one of the largest imbalances in the country, Bridge Michigan reported. The Republican National Committee sued Michigan Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson over the inflated voter rolls earlier this year, along with filing lawsuits over other election-related issues in the state, but Benson’s office dismissed the concerns on Wednesday, arguing that the lawsuits “lay the groundwork to overturn the results of the election if they don’t like them.”
“The RNC and its members are concerned that Defendants’ failure to comply with the NVRA’s voter-list maintenance obligations undermines the integrity of elections by increasing the opportunity for ineligible voters or voters intent on fraud to cast ballots,” the RNC’s lawsuit stated.
Secretary of State spokeswoman Angela Benander told Bridge Michigan that the GOP’s legal challenges “are an attempt to cause people to question the process.” The spokeswoman added that Michigan is expected to clear 606,800 inactive voters from the rolls, but that won’t be completed until 2027. Federal law requires voters to be removed from the rolls by state or local officials if the state is notified that they moved to a different state or if election mail sent to their home is returned as undeliverable. Voters are also removed if they do not vote in two consecutive federal elections.
Bridge Michigan reported that all but five of Michigan’s 83 counties have more registered voters than people of voting age who reside in those counties. In Michigan’s largest county, Wayne County — which is a Democratic stronghold in the state — there are 1.4 million registered voters, but only 1.3 million residents are old enough to vote, according to U.S. Census data. In Genessee County, another blue bastion in Michigan, there are nearly 351,000 registered voters despite fewer than 300,000 voting-age residents living in the county.
Most of the largest voter roll imbalances by ratio of registered voters to voting-age population are in Michigan’s northern counties, which are less populated and tend to vote Republican.
“The RNC relies on registration lists to estimate voter turnout, which informs the number of staff the RNC needs in a given jurisdiction, the number of volunteers needed to contact voters, and how much the RNC will spend on paid voter contacts,” the RNC’s lawsuit added. “If voter registration lists include names of voters who should no longer be on the list, the RNC may spend more resources on mailers, knocking on doors, and otherwise trying to contact voters, or it may misallocate its scarce resources among different jurisdictions.”
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