Federal appeals court upholds Michigan's process of removing dead people from voter rolls
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John McCosh/States Newsroom
Updated at 2:30 p.m.
A federal appeals panel has upheld Michigan's process for removing deceased voters from the voting rolls.
In a decision released Tuesday, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied an appeal of a lower court's dismissal of a lawsuit by the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative group that has filed legal challenges across the U.S. seeking to remove people from voter rolls.
'I'm very grateful that a federal court has once again recognized our strong work keeping our voter file up to date,' Benson said in a press release. 'Since 2020, our department has fought a record number of lawsuits based on false and meritless claims meant to undermine people's faith in Michigan's elections.'
Public Interest Legal Foundation filed the lawsuit against Benson, a Democrat who is also a candidate for governor, in November 2021, alleging Michigan was violating the National Voter Registration Act by refusing to remove 27,000 individuals from its qualified voter file the group said were dead.
Lawyers for Benson's office had argued that she declined to remove the voters because doing so without confirming the accuracy of the group's list would have risked removing eligible voters in violation of federal voting law, which seeks to ensure voters aren't wrongly removed.
That argument was supported by U.S. District Court Judge Jane Beckering of the Western District of Michigan, who in March 2024 rejected as 'theoretical' the harms claimed by the group, and concluded that deceased voters were removed from Michigan's voter rolls on a regular basis.
In its decision to reject Public Interest Legal Foundation's appeal, the 6th Circuit said Michigan has actively made 'an inherently rational, sensible attempt at maintaining accurate voter registration lists,' and that the state 'goes further by also actively employing a third party, ERIC, to assist in identifying deceased registrants. This additional effort only further enhances the reasonableness of Michigan's efforts to maintain accurate voter rolls.'
The Electronic Registration Information Center, commonly called ERIC, is a nonpartisan interstate cooperative that seeks to maintain accurate voter registration rolls.
According to the Public Interest Legal Foundation's website, the group has filed numerous lawsuits across the country requesting similar releases of voter roll information in an effort to prove illegal voting, which is extremely rare.
J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, sent the following to Michigan Advance when asked for comment on the decision,
'Disappointed that what Congress thought it was passing to keep rolls clean isn't being implemented,' Adams said.
Data from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission ranked Michigan fifth in the nation in 2020 and 2022 in removing registrations of voters who have died.
This story was updated with comment from the Public Interest Legal Foundation.
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