"It Only Gets Worse From Here"
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
Horrors from Michigan's Voter Rolls . . . County by County
By Kristine Christlieb, MFEI News & Commentary Editor
October 31, 2025
Who can forget the opening scene from the film version of The Twilight Zone?
Two friends, Dan Aykroyd and Albert Brooks, are driving on a dark road at night, joking about running out of gas, reminiscing about TV themes and story lines, including . . . The Twilight Zone. Aykroyd asks, “You wanna see something really scary?”
He very well could have been referring to Michigan’s voter rolls.
For volunteer researchers examining Michigan’s voter rolls for dead registrations, their document-based and shoe leather research findings tell a chilling tale they say will most certainly only get worse as their research continues.
Phani Mantravadi, co-founder of Check My Vote (CMV), works directly with election researchers. “A simple filtering of Michigan’s Qualified Voter File (QVF) for people with dates of birth before 1935 (age 90+) yields more than 20,000 registrants. Volunteer researchers are looking at all of those registrants, prioritizing for further investigation the ones who haven’t voted in years, and then verifying whether they are still living.”
Mantravadi further explained, “Research volunteers are checking names against Ancestry.com and other data files, verifying addresses, tracking down details and collecting evidence for clerks. This is the kind of time-consuming work most clerks’ staffs simply don’t have time to do.”
Check My Vote provided the following list of counties where volunteers have been working and the number of voter registrations they have documented evidence of the individuals being deceased. In a phone interview, Mantravadi emphasized: “This is just what we have documented so far.”
Benson’s New Rules Will Obstruct Removal of the Dead
On Wednesday, November 5, the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules will be reviewing seven pages of new rules Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson has submitted governing the circumstances under which a voter’s registration can be cancelled.
There are only four reasons a voter’s registration can be cancelled:
1) The individual isn’t old enough to vote.
2) The individual has moved and no longer resides within the jurisdiction where they registered.
3) The individual is not a United States citizen.
4) The individual is deceased.
Patrice Johnson, founder and chair of Michigan Fair Elections Institute spelled out how Benson’s rules will slow the process of removal. “For each registration that researchers challenge, there must be a written and notarized affidavit. Benson is creating a process that is overly restrictive and will delay valid cancellations.”
Critics say worries about dead people on the voter roles are overblown, but a Livonia volunteer election researcher discovered a person who passed away in 2019 somehow managed to vote in person in Michigan’s November 2022 election.
With all the dead people on the state’s voter’s rolls, the only good news is there won’t be a full moon on Election Night, November 3, 2026, but just in case, you might want to have your crucifix at the ready.
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