Updates to our Terms of Use

We are updating our Terms of Use. Please carefully review the updated Terms before proceeding to our website.

Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Advocacy Group Attacks Detroit’s Voting Rolls

Voters who are almost 200 years old have not been removed from Detroit’s voting records, an advocacy group claimed in federal court Tuesday.

DETROIT (CN) — Voters who are almost 200 years old have not been removed from Detroit’s voting records, an advocacy group claimed in federal court Tuesday.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation sued Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey and its Elections Director George Azzouz.

The foundation claims that vote fraud by undocumented aliens is rampant, and says on its website that it was established “to aid the cause of election integrity and fight against lawlessness in American elections.” Its president and general counsel, J. Christian Adams, was appointed to President Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in July 2017. The commission was disbanded six months later after being widely criticized as a partisan dog and pony show.

In its 22-page lawsuit, it states that the National Voters Rights Act requires states to have a program to ensure that voters who die or move away are stricken from the election rolls.

Detroit’s officials have not done that, it claims. It says some voters still on the rolls “have been dead for extraordinary amounts of time.”

Clerks can use several methods to check voters’ eligibility, including canvassing door to door, mailing address verification requests, through U.S. Postal Service’s change of address program.

The foundation claims that Detroit had more than 511,786 registered voters for the 2016 election, but according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2016 “1-year estimate,” the city had only 479,267 residents.

The foundation says it tried to help Detroit address this issue for two years, including by purchasing the entire state of Michigan’s voter roll on April 1 this year.

“The Foundation then identified records listing years of birth indicating registrants of 105 years of age and older, with some records listing dates of birth in the nineteenth century,” the complaint states.

“According to the Foundation’s research, the oldest active registrant in the City of Detroit was purportedly born in 1823, 14 years before Michigan was admitted to the Union as the 26th state.”

The foundation says it also found a child who was allowed to vote before the age of 17½, and voters who were registered two or three times.

“The defendants have many tools available to conduct list maintenance and, yet, they are failing to reasonably maintain the City of Detroit’s voter rolls,” the foundation says.

It is represented by Robert Avers, with Dickinson Wright of Ann Arbor.

Detroit did not immediately responded to an emailed request for comment.

Categories / Law, Politics

Subscribe to Closing Arguments

Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.

Loading...