Nearly 150 registered Detroit voters are dead, and more than a dozen others no longer live at their registered addresses, according to a news investigation into registrations challenged in 2024.
The Detroit News examined 230 Detroit voter registrations challenged in August by the Election Integrity Force, a nonprofit “formed by citizens concerned with attempts to subvert the integrity of our elections,” through public records, personal interviews, and other means in recent weeks.
The investigation found solid evidence 146 involved folks who were dead, including at least seven who died more than three decades ago, as well as 14 who are alive but had moved from their registered address.
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The News could not confirm the status of 70 of the challenged voters, including many with listed birth years of 1900, the year election officials said was used as a placeholder for missing birth dates when the state converted to the Qualified Voter File in 1998. Ninety-five of the challenged registrations listed 1900 as the birth year.
One of those challenged registrations belongs to 56-year-old Alicia Young, who moved from the Biltmore address on her registration 25 years ago and is now registered to vote at another address.
It’s the same deal for Mark Kennedy, 65, who told The News the challenged registration lists his mother’s address, but he votes with a different registration and address.
“I already voted,” Kennedy said.
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Detroit resident Croger Lampkin II said he still gets election mail for his father, Croger Lampkin Sr., who died in 1987, despite repeatedly notifying the city clerk’s office his father is no longer alive. Another registration for “Croger Lampkins” lists a birth date in 1903 and a registration address at Detroit’s Metropolitan United Methodist Church, according to the news site.
The investigation found other registered voters now reside at Resurrection Cemetery in Clinton Township, such as Wladslaw Glaz, who died in 1994.
Still other registrations listed addresses that do not exist.
“It’s not just a phenomenon that occurs in Detroit,” said Daniel Baxter, COO for absentee voting in Detroit. “It’s all over the state, as well as the country.”
In Michigan alone, the Election Integrity Force has sent more than 21,000 letters to election officials and clerks flagging registrations for ineligible voters, but city and state officials contend the process to remove them is tedious, requiring confirmation from the voter themselves, or through official sources like obituaries or public health agencies.
“The data challenges are real,” Ottawa County clerk Justin Roebuck said.
That’s evident in the voting rolls for both Detroit and Michigan in general, though the problem has grown since Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson took office.
In the Motor City, there’s currently 517,000 registered voters for a voting age population of 477,400, according to The News.
Statewide, there’s 8.4 million registered voters, or nearly a half-million more than are old enough to vote. The situation means there’s 103.8% as many registrations as legal voters, the third highest imbalance in the nation and by far the greatest in the Great Lakes region.
That reality has prompted multiple lawsuits, from the Republican National Committee and Public Interest Legal Foundation, which highlighted numerous deceased voters in a documentary earlier this year.
While the lawsuits have not claimed any actual fraud, and there’s no concrete evidence of actual fraud, they argue the bloated voter rolls provide the opportunity.
It wasn’t always that way.
When Benson took office, the state’s voter rolls sat at 7.5 million, or about 300,000 fewer than a voting age population of about 7.8 million. Over the next four years, the state had added 700,000 registrations – many automatically through driver’s license renewals – swelling the voter rolls to 8.2 million for a voting age population of 7.9 million by 2022, the year Democrats regained a Michigan government trifecta for the first time in 40 years.
Any question about that has prompted fierce blowback from Benson, who has attacked Elon Musk as a “troll” on X and in recent media appearances for highlighting the numbers on the Secretary of State website.
Michigan election officials added a disclaimer to the website this week on the 8.4 million total registered voters: “There are approximately 7.2 million active registered voters in Michigan. The total number of active registered voters in Michigan and the definition of active registered voter can be found on the Michigan Voting Dashboard.”
The site notes 338,471 registrations are slated to be removed in 2025, and another 256,295 in 2027, after Benson’s anticipated campaign to replace Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2026.
“Like every jurisdiction in Michigan, the City of Detroit removes outdated records from the voter rolls every day,” Benson spokeswoman Alegela Benander told The News. “We are confident they will continue to make reasonable efforts to keep the voter file up to date while preserving the rights of eligible citizens to vote.”
Benson, meanwhile, continues her campaign to smear Musk, the world’s richest man and strong supporter of former President Donald Trump, in media appearances this week.
In a recent appearance on Firing Line with Margaret Hoover, Benson claimed Musk and others concerned about the potential for fraud are conflating “active voters” with “registered voters” to mislead the public, ignoring the fact that all registered voters are eligible to cast ballots.
Mich. Sec. of State @JocelynBenson reacts to being accused of "lying" by @elonmusk about Michigan's voter rolls, saying the multi-billionaire is reiterating "misleading information" that is "really dangerous."
She also says she's upped her security as a result.
"There are… pic.twitter.com/j8kduKv0wK
— Firing Line with Margaret Hoover (@FiringLineShow) October 24, 2024
“The fact that he won’t clear that up and instead chooses to reiterate the misleading information is really dangerous because, you know …,” Benson said before Hoover chimed in to finish her sentence for her.
“It’s dangerous for everybody who believes it, but it’s actually dangerous for you,” Hoover said as Benson nodded along. “Because right now, as you told me, you have now state troopers surrounding your house and your small child and your family, because of the threats Elon’s platform creates for your security.”
“There’s real life consequences for those of us who try to stand up to truth and the law,” Benson claimed.