A lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Michigan by the conservative ethics watchdog group Public Interest Legal Foundation alleges that the state has almost 26,000 deceased people listed as registered voters in the state.
The suit, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan, contends that 25,975 dead people are still listed on the state’s voting rolls, and that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is not complying with the federal law known as the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, which states in part that election officials are required to “conduct a general program that makes a reasonable effort to remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters.”
The foundation argues that “Michigan’s list maintenance activities have proven unreasonably inadequate to identify many registrants who are deceased, some of which have been deceased for a significant number of years and been published in newspaper death notices. The foundation was able to find copies of death notices and pictures of grave markers for individuals included on the foundation’s list of likely deceased registrants.”
A spokesperson for Benson’s office told The Daily Signal that they hadn’t seen the lawsuit yet, and therefore could not comment on any specifics.
“Michigan maintains its voter registration list in accordance with all state and federal laws, including provisions for deceased voters,” the secretary’s chief of external affairs, Jake Rollow, told the Daily Signal in an email. “We have not yet seen such a lawsuit and cannot comment.”