‘Retaining voter rolls bloated with ineligible voters harms the electoral process, heightens the risk of electoral fraud, and undermines public confidence…’
(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) Michigan citizen Tony Daunt sued multiple state election officials—including the state’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson—for allowing the voter rolls in 16 counties to become bloated and susceptible to fraud, according to Fox News.
In Leelanau County, there are more people who have registered to vote than there are residents of voting age, the lawsuit claims.
“Comparing the registered voter count to the 2014-18 American Community Survey reveals that Leelanau County has a registration rate of 102%,” the complaint said.
Daunt said voting rolls are “suspiciously high” in the other 15 counties, since the state has not taken time to remove ineligible voters, including those who have died, moved or lost eligible voter status due to a felony conviction.
In these 15 counties, the registration rate exceeds 90 percent.
“Retaining voter rolls bloated with ineligible voters harms the electoral process, heightens the risk of electoral fraud, and undermines public confidence in elections,” said Daunt’s complaint.
Daunt said accurate voter rolls will be crucial in the 2020 presidential election, since President Donald Trump won Michigan by less than half of a percentage point in 2016.
The lawsuit alleges that the state has an obligation to maintain accurate voter rolls under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.
In response, the far-left American Civil Liberties Union claimed, without evidence, that states have used voter roll lawsuits as “a method of mass disenfranchisement, purging eligible voters from rolls for illegitimate reasons or based on inaccurate data, and often without adequate notice to the voters.”
The statistics that Daunt used in the lawsuit come from Honest Elections Project, the Census Bureau’s 2014-2018 American Community Surve, and the Michigan secretary of state.
Daunt filed the lawsuit against Benson, Bureau of Elections Director Jonathan Brater and others in the federal District Court for the Western District of Michigan.