By. K.D. Norris
As Michigan voters go to the polls this week for primary elections, there will be nearly 200,000 fewer registered voters on the rolls in Kentwood, Wyoming and around the state as there were prior to the 2016 election.
The Michigan Department of State recently detailed that as part of the state’s election security readiness, Secretary of State Ruth Johnson and the state’s Bureau of Elections have cleared the state’s voting registration rolls of about 1.2 million names since 2011, about 200,000 since 2016.
Call it voter “validation” or “scrubbing” or “purging,” the breakdown of the 1.2 million total, according to Johnson’s office, includes about 563,000 once-registered voters who have died, about 500,000 who moved within the state and re-registered, about 134,000 who moved out of state and have registered as voters elsewhere, and — Secretary Johnson specifically points out — “3,512 non-citizens”.
The Secretary of State and the Bureau of Elections Qualified Voter File upgrades are only part of a recent and ongoing voter security effort in the state, and WKTV has been covering those efforts.
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As part of “continuous voter-list maintenance efforts, the Bureau of Elections and local clerks regularly scrub the voter list to remove ineligible voters,” Johnson has stated a press release from her office and in an op-ed submitted to other media. This includes “an upgraded Qualified Voter File system used by the Bureau of Elections and local clerks to maintain the state’s registered voter list and other election-related data.”
Not everybody gives the state Qualified Voter File system as glowing a review, however.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan questions the claim of the non-citizen voters purged and advocates for another way the state’s system could be made better — by citizen action rather than government action.
“I haven’t seen any proof to substantiate the claim that thousands of non-citizens were purged from the voting rolls,” Sharon Dolente, Voting Rights Strategist for the ACLU of Michigan, said to WKTV. “Between 2013 and the present, the Secretary has offered numbers ranging from 11 to 3,500, but absolutely no proof.
“Michigan (also) needs a failsafe system that allows an eligible voter to re-register if they were improperly purged,” Dolente said. “Same Day Registration would provide that failsafe. Voters will have a chance to implement this policy measure through the Promote the Vote initiative this fall.”
The “non-citizens” total is 0.3 percent of all voters scrubbed from the rolls and 0.05 percent of the total number of registered voters in Michigan, which is 7,387,689 as of July 28, according to Johnson’s office.
How voters get ‘scrubbed’ from the rolls
The state approved voter roll validation/scrubbing/purging system is detailed in Michigan Bureau of Elections Chapter 2, Elections Officials Manual, updated January 2017.
In brief, local city and township clerks, including the cities of Wyoming and Kentwood, perform the actual scrubbing of registered voter files, as directed by the Secretary of State and the Bureau of Elections. The Kent County Clerk’s election division is not directly involved.
“Michigan’s Qualified Voter File (QVF) is maintained, and voters can only be added or removed, by the Secretary of State or Michigan’s municipal (280 city or 1,240 township) clerks throughout the state,” Robert J. Macomber, Chief Deputy County Clerk, said to WKTV. “A county clerk does not have the authority to remove voters from the QVF, even despite being the issuer of death certificates.
“While serving as the chief Elections Official of the county voting process, the County Clerk only serve as a pass-through with regards to the voter registration process. An individual may register to vote at their County Clerk’s office, but we forward that paperwork onto the local clerks, as they serve as the maintainer of the voter lists for their respective jurisdiction.”
Removal of voters who have died is a straight-forward process, and occurs if “the clerk receives or obtains information that the voter has died. (From) sources: QVF inbox notification; county clerk; death notices published in newspaper; personal knowledge,” as detailed in the elections manual.
Voters who moved out of state are removed after it is confirmed they have registered to vote using an out-of-state address that is newer than their Michigan home address and/or registration. But the removal of voters from Michigan voter rolls using the Interstate Crosscheck system takes time.
“All people believed to have moved away are sent mailings prior to the registration cancellation,” Fred Woodhams, spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s office, said to WKTV. “The actual cancellation does not happen until two federal election cycles (Novembers in an even year) have occurred. If the person votes or updates their voter information in Michigan before the cancellation occurs, the cancellation process stops.”
The Interstate Crosscheck system is run by the Kansas Secretary of State, according to multiple media reports. Other states send in their voter data and Kansas processes it, then notifies them if there are any possible matches. Matches can occur when people move to a new state and register to vote without cancelling their previous registration. In 2017, 28 states participated and 7.2 million potential matches were identified.
Use of the system recently suffered a legal setback as a federal court in June blocked an Indiana voter registration law which would allow the state to immediately strike voters from the electoral rolls.
Voters who have moved within the state of Michigan and re-register can, however, be removed from old voter rolls immediately.
Removal can and will occur if “a voter who moves to a new jurisdiction within Michigan has his or her voter registration address change along with the address for the person’s driver’s license or state ID card,” Woodhams said. “In this case, we can be certain the person has moved out of one jurisdiction into another.”
The process of determining if a person is not a American citizen was not detailed by the Secretary of State’s office.
Also, Woodhams said there is no statistics kept on how many voters were scrubbed broken down by political party. Michigan does not require voters to choose a party when registering and “only presidential primary ballots ore differentiated by party … August primary voters are all issued one ballot that contains columns of candidates for the Republican, Democratic and Libertarian parties. The voter marks the ballot only in the column for one of the parties.”
