This story was produced as part of the 2024 Elections Reporting Grant Program, organized by the Center for Community Media and funded by the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation and the Tow Foundation.

Michigan has more registered voters than citizens eligible to cast ballots, a controversial side effect of federal laws meant to protect voting rights that is inadvertently fueling election integrity concerns.

There were 8.2 million registered voters in 2022 but only 7.6 million residents are old enough to vote. Michigan election officials say that’s because 11% of the list includes inactive voters who are in the process of having their registration terminated. 

State officials said the true number is better reflected in the 7.3 million registered voters who were considered active in 2022. Citizens cast 4.5 million votes in the 2022 election. 

Clerks across the country are facing a surge of scrutiny on the accuracy of voter lists while conservative groups file lawsuits seeking more aggressive voter purges. Election processes in battleground states like Michigan are facing increased scrutiny four years after former President Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 election results based on unproven allegations of coordinated voter fraud.

A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit by the Republican National Committee in October that claimed Michigan is failing to maintain accurate voter registration records. The RNC sought a court-ordered program to remove ineligible voters from the list. It’s one of several legal battles questioning Michigan’s inflated list of voters. 

Regardless, reports of Michigan’s bloated voter rolls were seized on by billionaire Elon Musk, who endorsed and is campaigning for Trump. Musk has used X, the social media platform he owns, to advance Trump’s candidacy and seed doubt on election security.

Musk called attention to Michigan’s registered voter list and accused Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson of lying in posts that racked up more than 60 million views. 

Michigan’s Auditor General released a performance audit in 2022 that concluded a “sufficient” effort by the state to maintain the integrity of the qualified voter file. The list isn’t expected to be perfect – federal law  requires “reasonable effort” to remove ineligible voters. 

Federal data shows Michigan removed 6% of all registered voters in 2022 – a total of 485,916 names. Nearly half were removed from the list because they died, while a third were removed because they failed to confirm their address, and the rest changed residences. The state is poised to terminate the registration of 360,228 voters across the state in 2025. 

Detroit remains a central character in false voter fraud narratives promoted by Trump, who wrongly claimed Detroit had more votes than people in 2020. 

Detroit has 521,348 registered voters and 467,342 are considered active. Roughly one in 10 registered voters are inactive and in the process of being removed. 

The city clerk’s office did not respond to questions about how many Detroit voters were removed from the list ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Inactive voters are still eligible to vote in person, where their signature is matched with the voter file. If an inactive voter mails in an absentee voter ballot, the ballot must be marked as challenged.

BridgeDetroit has answers to common questions related to how the voter rolls work in Michigan. 

How voter rolls are maintained

The National Voting Rights Act lays out how voter registration lists are kept and requires states to make a reasonable effort to remove voters who die or move addresses. 

The law seeks to balance protections for election security and voter participation. Keeping clean voter rolls helps ensure election integrity, but purging voters can hinder participation in elections. 

It takes two consecutive federal elections – or six years – for an ineligible voter to be removed, giving voters ample opportunity to update their information and stay registered. It is inevitable that voter registration rolls will contain some voters who are no longer eligible to vote, according to the U.S. Election Administration Commission.

Michigan’s list of registered voters is maintained by the state’s Bureau of Elections and local clerks. 

Most voters are removed from the state’s list immediately after dying or updating their driver’s license. Motor vehicle offices and the postal system trigger a large number of registration removals. 

Chris Thomas, former state elections director and an adviser for the Detroit Elections Department, said Michigan is the only state that uses a single address for voting and driving records. A state audit found 99% of information in the qualified voter file matched data contained in the state’s driver’s license file. 

“That’s left us in a pretty unique position, relying very heavily on the driver file,” he said. “When people move, our system automatically moves that voter as soon as they change their driver’s license address. That’s one of the mainstays of the system.” 

Nine out of 10 new registrations in 2022 came from motor vehicle agencies. The qualified voter file is updated when a person obtains, renews or updates the address on their driver’s license. The Bureau of Elections receives a daily report of  changes to driver’s licenses. 

Michigan law requires the Secretary of State to notify each clerk when a driver’s license or state identification card has an address change. A clerk may also use change of address information supplied by the United States Postal Service to update their voter file. 

If a voter moves within their city or township, the registration moves to their new address. If a voter moves to a different city or township, the voter’s previous registration is canceled, and the voter is automatically re-registered at the new address.

How a voter becomes inactive

A voter’s registration status can become inactive when election mail is returned as undeliverable, meaning the address is incorrect or incomplete. The voter is sent a notice and has two federal election cycles to update their information before their registration is canceled. 

The state removed 176,788 voters for failing to return a confirmation notice in 2022. 

The 2018 constitutional amendment that led to the expansion of no-reason absentee voting and the COVID-19 pandemic two years later led to a large number of cancellations because the state mailed absentee ballot applications to every registered voter in Michigan ahead of the 2020 election.

Approximately 400,000 registered voters were sent notices after their absentee ballot application was returned as undeliverable, triggering a process to remove them from the list. 

How city clerks know when someone dies

There are several ways clerks become aware of when a person dies. 

The Michigan Department of State receives weekly updates from the Social Security Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the state health department. 

When someone dies, their death record is added to a federal Master Death Index. The Michigan Department of State receives this information weekly and the Bureau of Elections cancels the voter registrations of all registered voters who appear on the report.

The state also receives potentially deceased records from the Electronic Registration Information Center, which shares information between 30 participating states. 

Michigan removed 232,745 dead voters from its registration list in 2022. Federal data shows Michigan is among the most active states in the United States in canceling the registrations of people who die. 

County clerks act as the local registrar for maintaining death records. They are required to forward a list of the last known address and birth date of all persons over 18 who have died within the county to local clerks.

State law requires clerks to immediately cancel the voter registration of dead people, but it’s possible for a person to die after putting their ballot in the mail. Election workers examining the absent voter ballot envelope are required to verify whether the voter is registered. The ballot would be counted if there’s no information about the death. 

The Michigan Auditor General found 2,775 votes were cast by people who died before election day in elections spanning from 2019 to 2020. This represents 0.02% of votes cast during that time period. Nearly all of them died within 40 days of the election. 

Inflated voter rolls spur fraud allegations

The recently-dismissed RNC lawsuit pointed to the larger number of registered voters than adult citizens as evidence of voter fraud in Michigan. The judge in the case concluded there was insufficient evidence to prove flaws in the list maintenance process.

Michigan’s process of removing dead voters was affirmed after being challenged in a 2021 lawsuit from the Public Interest Legal Foundation. 

The conservative group claimed it found roughly 27,000 “potentially deceased” voters who remained registered. A judge determined Michigan makes sufficient efforts to remove dead voters, arguing that even if those registered voters were actually dead, they represent only 0.3% of all registered voters and around 5,700 had already been removed. 

Detroit resident Ramon Jackson filed a lawsuit against the city’s Department of Elections, Clerk Janice Winfrey and Benson. Jackson alleged he found dozens of discrepancies in Detroit’s registration list, including people who are registered at addresses they don’t live at, claiming he uncovered a conspiracy to cast fake ballots dating back to 2017. 

Jackson sought a judgment that those elections were unconstitutional and a court order to remove all residents who moved from Detroit or died since 2010. 

The lawsuit was dismissed in October. A federal judge ruled that Jackson lacked legal standing and claims about past elections are moot because the results had long been certified. 

The Detroit Clerk’s Office and Michigan Secretary of State argued individuals named in Jackson’s lawsuit either registered to vote through legal means or are in the process of being removed from the list. 

Efforts to remove names from the list of registered voters are sometimes called “voter purges” because officials can accidentally remove eligible voters or target certain groups. Voter purges can disenfranchise eligible voters but efforts continue to be made to prevent excessive removals. 

Michigan previously purged registrations when mail was returned as undeliverable, but a federal judge deemed the practice unconstitutional in 2008. Roughly 30,000 voters in Detroit were being removed annually before it ended.

Researchers with Michigan State University found voter purges that occurred from 2014-18 disproportionately affected urban areas with larger populations of Democratic, low-income and Black voters.

They studied geographic patterns within 177,432 voters removed from the state’s voter file. Richard Sadler, an associate professor of public health at MSU, said the racial disparity is concerning. However, researchers could not pin down the cause and said it should be studied further. 

Thomas Wojciechowski, an assistant professor in MSU’s School of Criminal Justice, said the strong racial disparity could point to partisan bias or racial discrimination. People in urban areas moving residences or dying at higher rates is another explanation, but he said those factors are minor. 

Sadler said there were also higher rates of purges in communities along Michigan’s borders, suggesting people moving out of the state. 

The U.S. Department of Justice released new guidance to states on the limits of removing voters, reminding that voter purges can’t happen within 90 days of the election. Michigan must suspend any voter removal program by May 8 due to the state’s Aug. 6 primary. 

The Justice Department went to court against the state of Alabama to stop a voter purge program that was started within the 90-day “quiet period.” A federal judge ordered the program to cease.