PRESS RELEASE: New Abridged Edition of Landmark Report on MI Election Oversight Failures
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Twenty-page guide exposes how MI's SOS can promulgate legally unauthorized election rules that cannot be stopped — with the November 2026 election at stake
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 22, 2026
CONTACT
Melanie Nivelt
Phone: 248.425.8896
Email: melanierepresents@gmail.com
IMPORTANT LINKS
STOCKBRIDGE, Mich. — With Michigan’s November 2026 general election seven months away — determining 13 U.S. House seats, a U.S. Senate seat, the Governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General, all 148 state legislative seats, and two Michigan Supreme Court positions — Michigan Fair Elections Institute (MFEI) is releasing an abridged edition of its landmark report, Compromised Checkpoints: Restoring Independence in Michigan’s Election Oversight.
The 20-page, dual-audience guide — written for both general readers and legal practitioners — explains in plain language how three election rule packages containing 40 rules with apparent federal, state, and constitutional violations advanced through Michigan’s oversight system without correction — and why they could not be stopped.
"We were puzzled by how these rule sets could not be stopped or altered, so we started investigating,” said Patrice Johnson, Chair and Co-Founder of MFEI.
She further explained, "The answers took us back 30 years — to executive orders issued by four governors, two Republican and two Democrat. Each one inserted a rules-review office at the top of the oversight system without legislative authorization and without a single independence protection. By the time the current Secretary of State expanded that office to cover election rules for the first time in Michigan history, the structural conditions for unchecked rulemaking were already in place.”
The full investigation, documented in MFEI’s 195-page report Compromised Checkpoints (April 2026), found that Michigan’s rulemaking oversight office, MOAHR, was created by executive order and operates with none of the five standard independence protections that every comparable state has adopted in part or in full.
MFEI’s 24-state study found that across 23 other states with dual administrative review systems, 100 percent enacted legislation to create their oversight office, 91 percent established qualification requirements for the director, and 87 percent built in structural independence. Michigan scores 0 of 5.
The legislature’s own oversight committee, JCAR, is structurally prone to partisan deadlock and cannot exercise its disapproval function. The result is a rulemaking process with no meaningful check on executive authority.
Three election rule packages — Rule Set 2025-13 (voter registration), Rule Set 2025-14 (e-pollbook deletion), and Rule Set 2025-15 (poll challengers) — advanced through this structurally compromised system and will govern Michigan’s 2026 election from registration through post-election operations.
Rule Set 2025-14’s mandate to destroy electronic pollbook data seven days after certification directly conflicts with the federal 22-month record preservation requirement under 52 U.S.C. § 20701, making compliance with both laws simultaneously impossible. Clerks across Michigan are currently destroying records that federal law requires them to keep.
The constitutional case against MOAHR’s structure is supported by five provisions of Michigan’s 1963 Constitution and by precedent from the Florida and Wisconsin Supreme Courts. In Whiley v. Scott, 79 So.3d 702 (Fla. 2011), the Florida Supreme Court struck down an identically structured executive-order-created mandatory rulemaking gatekeeper. MOAHR has never faced equivalent judicial review. The full report’s legal framework and model complaint structure are designed to support such a challenge.
The abridged edition also places Michigan’s structural failures in federal constitutional context, including MFEI’s participation as amici in Bost v. Illinois State Board of Elections, 607 U.S. — (2026), in which the U.S. Supreme Court established competitor standing for federal candidates challenging illegally structured elections, and the pending Watson v. Republican National Committee, No. 24-1260, in which MFEI and co-amici argue that government actors may not adopt a “no limits” theory of their own authority to evade structural mandates — the same principle at the heart of the Michigan findings.
The abridged edition is structured for two audiences simultaneously. General readers will find Michigan’s rulemaking failures explained in plain language with no legal background required. Legal practitioners will find statutory citations, constitutional provisions, controlling and persuasive case law, and cross-references to the full report integrated throughout. The edition covers eight sections, a Quick Reference table of key cases and statutes, and a full-report section map for deeper research. It is available free at MiFairElections.org.
The report identifies judicial, legislative, and administrative remedies. Judicial pathways include a constitutional challenge to MOAHR itself under MCL 24.287 and a federal preemption challenge to Rule Set 2025-14. MCL 24.264 requires no exhaustion of administrative remedies before filing. The most durable legislative remedy would be a statute creating Michigan’s administrative oversight office with the five standard independence protections that 23 comparable states have already adopted.
About Michigan Fair Elections Institute
Michigan Fair Elections Institute (MFEI) is a 501(c)(3) nonpartisan educational organization dedicated to election integrity research, public education, and litigation support. MFEI does not support or oppose candidates for public office. The full report, Abridged Edition, and supporting documentation are available at MiFairElections.org.
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