Keep our Republic Executive Director Ari Mittelman and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson at a Sept. 19, 2024 panel on election safeguards hosted in Ann Arbor. | Kyle Davidson
As part of a push from the nonpartisan group Keep Our Republic to demystify the election process, key elections officials from Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona gathered at the Gerald R. Ford Library in Ann Arbor to outline the laws and procedures keeping their elections secure.
Following an introduction by Keep our Republic Executive Director Ari Mittelman and Pillars of the Community Co-Chair Ben Ginsberg, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson kicked off the panel by discussing safeguards in Michigan to prevent ineligible voters from casting their ballot.
Michigan’s first layer of security is its voter registration process, Benson explained, noting that the vast majority of Michiganders are registered to vote automatically when visiting secretary of state branch offices.
Michigan is one of two states where the secretary of state handles both elections and the driver and department of motor vehicles side of things, Benson said. This allows eligible Michiganders receiving a driver’s license and state ID to register to vote or update their voter registration, with Michigan’s automatic voter registration system automatically registering individuals who apply for a driver’s license or state ID unless they opt out or are ineligible.
Updating voter registration is crucial, Benson said, noting how the state’s automatic voter registration process enables workers from the Secretary of State’s Office to check a voters address every time someone renews their vehicle’s plates or their driver’s license and ensure they are still registered to vote at the correct address, ensuring the accuracy of the state’s voter roles.
Pillars of the Community Co-Chairs Bob Bauer and Ben Ginsberg at a Sept. 19, 2024 panel in Ann Arbor. | Kyle Davidson.
This process also ensures that everyone who has registered to vote in Michigan has to be able to show some form of documentation prior to registering to vote, Benson explained, pointing to allegations of non-citizen voting raised in recent years.
“In order to get a license or a state ID, you have to show some sort of documentation. It can include a green card, it can also include a passport, it can also include the social security number. But in presenting that documentation, individuals who are presenting that to our branch office employees, essentially, implicitly, are showing whether or not they’re citizens,” said Benson, a Democrat.
If someone presents their green card or some other form of documentation that shows they’re not a citizen, that enables the secretary of state to block any sort of voter registration effort and ensure they’re not registering noncitizens to vote, Benson said, She noted there are also several other audits performed throughout the year, and the secretary of state continually works with local clerks to check and verify voters’ eligibility.
Lisa Posthumus Lyons, the Kent County clerk and register of deeds who’s a former GOP House member, explained that Michigan’s county clerks don’t have the authority to update or clean up the voter rolls, but they do play a role in helping the secretary of state and local clerks keep accurate records.
With the 2024 presidential election marking her 27th election cycle, Posthumus Lyons said she has never seen an instance of a non-citizen casting a ballot. However, she has seen instances of non-citizens being registered to vote when Michigan first began rolling out its automatic voter registration program.
“It’s rare. It’s happened fewer, fewer and farther between since then, but it did happen. And what we found is that this is a situation where these people are here legally, they have documentation, they got a driver’s license and they were automatically registered to vote, even though they’re not eligible,” Posthumus Lyons said.
“So what do they do? They are not going to risk breaking the law and casting a ballot. You know, they’re more troubled by it than anybody. And so they’ve been self-reporting to us, you know, in these very few instances, they’ve self-reported to us,” Posthumus Lyons said. “They want off the rolls. They don’t want any misunderstanding that they had any intention of violating the laws here, because they know what the consequences are.”
In looking at another issue, removing deceased voters from voter rolls, Posthumus Lyons explained that while County Clerks in Michigan do not have the authority to remove deceased voters from the rolls, they perform monthly checks to flag deceased voters to local clerks, who must then remove those voters. These checks also get more frequent as an election approaches, she said.
“When it comes to the deceased voters, that’s one of the easiest and the cleanest and the most accurate maintenance that we do,” Posthumus Lyons said.
Kent County Clerk and Register of Deeds Lisa Posthumus Lyons at a Sept. 19, 2024 panel of bipartisan election officials from multiple battleground states hosted at the Gerald R. Ford Library in Ann Arbor. | Kyle Davidson
In addition to the checks performed by county clerks, the secretary of state also checks the state’s master death index each week, Benson said. Local clerks with personal knowledge also have the ability to perform more frequent updates to voter rolls, Benson said.
Posthumus Lyons also identified a challenge in maintaining accurate voter registration records for voters who move out of state. She encouraged voters to do some “adulting” when they move out of state and contact their local clerk to cancel their registration, because there is not a government program that connects states to clean up that registration.
Ottawa County Clerk and Register of Deeds Justin Roebuck, a Republican, noted that there is a non-federal consortium of states committed to maintaining the integrity of their voter rolls that would notify another state’s secretary of state’s office when someone obtained a driver’s license in another state, the Electronic Registration Information Center. However, the group has suffered as a result of other states leaving the program.
Alongside the checks in place in Michigan, other state election officials also shared insight into their processes to ensure accurate voter rolls and secure elections.
Al Schmidt, a GOP former elections official in Philadelphia, is Pennsylvania’s secretary of the commonwealth who was appointed by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro. Schmidt said that when he served as a Republican election commissioner in Philadelphia, he undertook a number of research projects on claims like noncitizen voting, dead people voting and double voting.
When he found a very small number of noncitizens registered to vote in Philadelphia County, he discovered that these individuals had been registered through the state’s motor voter system, and were asked if they would like to register to vote while applying for a driver’s license. The issue was corrected so noncitizens no longer encounter this screen when applying for a license.
“Despite its resurgence as an issue, [noncitizen voter registration] in Pennsylvania was extremely rare, and to the extent that it existed at all, was resolved by the Pennsylvania Department of State,” Schmidt said.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, discussed false claims that more than 10,315 dead people voted in Georgia in the 2020 election. The secretary of state found four cases, all of which were prosecuted, Raffensperger said.
There were also false allegations of 66,000 underaged voters, Raffensperger said, noting there were zero cases of underaged voting.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger speaks at a Sept. 19, 2024 panel of bipartisan election officials from multiple battleground states hosted at the Gerald R. Ford Library in Ann Arbor. | Kyle Davidson
Former President Donald Trump refused to accept his 2020 loss in Georgia, claiming he’d won the state on election night despite results not yet being determined. He later spread false claims about dead and underaged voters, and continued to accuse workers of stuffing ballot boxes, accusations Raffensperger’s office found were false.
Trump also called Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021, asking him to change vote totals and call it a “recalculation.”
Trump also pressured Frances Watson, the chief investigator in the Georgia secretary of state’s office, asking her to do “whatever you can do.”
“There’s all sorts of allegations. But I think really the key issue as it relates to that is making sure at the top of the hopper before people get on the voter list, that is really where it all starts. That’s where the hard work is. Because if you have a clean [voting] list, then that really gives people confidence when they have confidence then you have trust. And right now, we need more trust in people that are running systems in the government,” Raffensperger said.
Raffensperger made two recommendations for restoring that trust: nationwide photo ID requirements, and state and federal constitutional amendments to only allow American citizens to vote. A measure to do so in the GOP-led U.S. House failed this week.
According to the National Immigration Forum, noncitizens have been barred from voting in federal elections since 1924, with Congress approving penalties in 1996 for noncitizen voting in federal elections. While the U.S. Constitution does not forbid noncitizens from voting, no state constitution permits noncitizen voting, though some municipalities allow noncitizens to vote in local elections.
“Eight states are going to have constitutional amendments on their state ballots to make sure that only American citizens are allowed to vote in those states. I think you need to take a look at how much that wins by. I think it’s going to be 70, 80% — what does that mean? That means it has strong support from both political parties,” Raffensperger said.
North Carolina State Board of Elections Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell and Forsyth County, N.C. Elections Director Tim Tsuji at a Sept. 19, 2024 panel on election safeguards hosted in Ann Arbor, Mich. | Kyle Davidson
In North Carolina, State Board of Elections Executive Director Karen Brinson Bell noted that while they also coordinate with their state’s department of motor vehicles to keep noncitizens from registering to vote, they also have begun coordinating with clerks of court to notify them when an individual indicates they are unable to fulfill their jury duty requirements because they are not a U.S. citizen.
Alongside the safeguards taken in maintaining accurate voter rolls, the election officials also discussed the steps they take in testing their voting tabulators, processing ballots and their processes for ensuring safety on voting day, with many officials noting that their equipment tests are open to the public.
Of the states present at the panel, none of them have voting tabulators connected to the internet, which has been a persistent right-wing conspiracy theory.
“We get criticized for not testing our equipment against cyber attacks. … When your machine is not connected to the internet, what am I testing for cyber attacks?” Brinson Bell said.
Even if there is an electronic armageddon, clerks always have an immutable trail of paper ballots to go back to and audit, said Stephen Richer, the Republican recorder for Maricopa County, Ariz.
“In Arizona, the political parties do a post election hand-count audit of the results to make sure the tabulators weren’t inaccurately reading the ballots,” Richer said.
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