A conservative legal group appealed a federal court ruling Tuesday that sidelined its efforts to clean Michigan’s voter rolls of 26,000 apparently deceased residents. On the same day, the RNC alleged Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is not cleaning the permanent mail ballot list of 92,000 inactive registrants.
The appellate brief filed by the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) asked the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a decision issued by U.S. District Court Judge Jane Beckering in March. Beckering, a Biden appointee, claimed Michigan makes a good-faith effort to remove ineligible voters from its voter rolls on a “regular and ongoing basis,” and subsequently dismissed the legal group’s lawsuit, which asserted otherwise.
PILF originally sued Benson in November 2021 for her alleged failure to remove roughly 26,000 potentially deceased registrants from the state’s voter registration lists, which the legal group argued constituted a violation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. That law requires state officials to make “a reasonable effort to remove the names of ineligible voters from the official lists of eligible voters.”
PILF published a mini-documentary in February showcasing the grave markers of numerous deceased individuals reportedly still included on Michigan’s voter rolls.
In its appeal, PILF noted how its requests to depose Benson and a member of her staff over the alleged shortcomings in Michigan’s voter file were denied by the district court. The group’s attempt to depose ERIC, a third-party organization that works with Michigan on voter list maintenance, was also
