Tim Vetter and DEEP Team's Open Memo to Secretary of State Candidates
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- 7 min read
First things that must be done to heal Michigan's voter rolls
By Tim Vetter and the DEEP (Data Evaluation Election Processes) Team
February 24, 2026
[Editor's Note: Recently, MFEI News & Commentary invited Tim Vetter and his Data Evaluation Election Processes (DEEP) Team to draft "an open letter to the Secretary of State candidates (Dems & GOP) identifying the top ten things whoever is elected must do to clean up Michigan's voter rolls. . . . What are the first things that must be done to heal the QVF?"
What follows is Vetter and his team's answer. Michigan Fair Elections Institute occasionally works with the DEEP Team, a fully independent association of volunteers, on election integrity-related projects. The following list of recommendations is that of the DEEP Team and does not necessarily represent the recommendations of Michigan Fair Elections Institute.
"On the surface, MFEI agrees with the DEEP Team's recommendations although we can't endorse them because we have not vetted them," MFEI Chair and Founder Patrice Johnson explains. "For example, some of the recommended items are advisory only as they are not yet in statute," Johnson says.
Vetter writes on his X account that he is "fighting for a World Class Election system and exposing data manipulation of our vote history records that should never change."]
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In this 250th Anniversary Year of the Declaration of Independence, Michigan stands at the crossroads of voter integrity. To paraphrase our Declaration, when it’s necessary for one people to dissolve a voting system, a decent respect to the opinions of voters requires reform of our Michigan Voting System. All voters are created equal and entitled to God-given rights to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. All are therefore also entitled to freedom from having their votes diluted from inadequate voter roll maintenance, legal loopholes, and potential manipulation, as highlighted in various reports, lawsuits, and analyses.
Here are the top ten priority actions for the next elected Secretary of State to implement for a thorough redesign. These steps aim to ensure accuracy, compliance with federal and state laws like the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) and Help America Vote Act (HAVA), and restore public trust without suppressing legitimate voters or diluting their legitimate ballots.
Conduct a Full Voter Re-Registration in content and design*: Purge the entire Qualified Voter File (QVF) and require all voters to re-register in-person with photo ID, proof of citizenship, and residency verification. This would eliminate persistent bloat and mismatches, starting fresh while locking down access to prevent future tampering. Redesign what is a registration record with published change logs.
Secure/Lock Vote History Records after County Certification: Conduct a full forensic audit of QVF transaction logs to identify and correct altered histories (e.g., changing who voted when), which violate MCL 168.509q and federal preservation laws. Make logs publicly accessible via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to enforce five-year retention to enable audits of past election results. Lock from changes any possible “entry, erasure, or alteration” of these records in the QVF per state law MCL168.932.
Data Export Reporting Standards and Real Time Access for ALL: Include change logs with all digital records. Voter ID (a unique identifier) mandatory in all reports to allow validation of report data.
QVF Data Storage and Archive Standards: QVF must maintain an accurate list of registered voters and vote history records to all data allowable by FOIA law. Create a standard process to properly archive a complete and state-certified election. Following all elections, the county certification process will confirm all registrants who voted are added to the QVF, and the registrant’s vote history is retained for a minimum of five years and then archived, not deleted. State, county, and local clerks must have the ability to produce a complete and accurate list of voters which validates, complete with county certifications, who voted in an election. The local clerk will have an off-line, independent, and archived list of digital voters generated from the electronic poll book. The retention for this digital local list of voters must be retained for a five-year minimum and then properly archived for historical purposes.
Ballot Tabulator Counts and Electronic Poll Book List of Voters Validation: Precincts must balance or have a clear explanation for the imbalance. Unexplained or large discrepancies trigger further review during the county certification (the official post-election verification process), in which officials research and resolve issues before certifying results. This step helps detect and deter potential issues like ballot stuffing, duplicate voting, or lost ballots, building public confidence. Paper-to-paper, digital-to-digital, paper-to-digital validation and should occur and cross validate.
Paper Ballot Digitization and Cross-Scanner Validation: Paper ballots must be scanned to create digital ballot images, including metadata such as creation date and scanner ID on or before Election Day. To verify accuracy and comply with federal law, a representative sample (or all feasible) of the original paper ballots must be rescanned using a different ballot scanner. The system of scanning the same ballots from different ballot scanners must achieve an error rate in counting ballots (considering only system-attributable errors, not voter errors) no greater than the standard established under the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), codified at 52 U.S.C. § 21081(a)(5). This incorporates the error rate standards from Section 3.2.1 of the Federal Election Commission’s Voting Systems Standards in effect on October 29, 2002 (commonly referenced as a maximum acceptable ballot position error rate benchmark of 1 in 500,000 in testing contexts,as derived from historical FEC/EAC guidelines).
Auto-Validation / Sync with Other Federal Databases: Full Social Security Number (SSN) and legal name should be mandatory so cross checking with the SAVE database and other federal records can occur. If not a natural born citizen, citizenship data should also be captured.
Withdraw from ERIC. Eliminate NGO Direct Access and Foreign Access to Our QVF: ERIC (the Electronic Registration Information Center), a nonprofit interstate organization claims to share voter registration data among member states to help maintain accurate voter rolls by identifying duplicates, movers, and deceased voters. But ERIC is non-transparent and shares registrants' private, personal information with undisclosed third parties, agents, and contractors. It has significantly failed to help clean voter rolls as clearly documented with the state having more active registrations than its voting-age population. Eliminate provisions that allow overseas U.S. citizens (expatriates living abroad) to maintain voter registrations using old U.S. addresses that introduce inaccuracies, privacy risks, or vulnerabilities to non-citizen or fraudulent voting. Overseas U.S. citizens (UOCAVA) should not be exempt from challenge and should be subject to the same eligibility verification as domestic civilians. All will be clearly flagged and must use the address of their local jurisdiction, not some random address. Must update this law. MCL § 168.759a, Subsection (19)(c)
Ballot Tabulators that Use Ballot Watermarks for Votes: Ballot tabulators need to rely on the ballot watermarks and the voter’s oval selections within the ovals that meet a specification for percent filled inside the oval for the generation of vote counts. Need to pass a law that requires hard copy ballots to be processed in two different tabulators and must validate the same vote counts within the federally-mandated HAVV specification. 1 error per 500,000 ballot positions.
Conform to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s Election Management Guidelines.
As Michigan constituents, the DEEP Team urges all candidates to end vote manipulation, reform the QVF system for data integrity, and provide comprehensive election auditability.
*The DEEP Team's #1 item listed above captures all of the tasks below:
Purge Inactive Voters Within Federal Limits: Immediately remove voters inactive for more than 4 years (the NVRA maximum), reducing the current backlog of over 558,000 long-inactive registrations. Michigan's rules allowing up to 20 years of inactivity violate NVRA §20507(a)(4) and inflate rolls unnecessarily. Start with the planned cancellation of 318,000+ inactive records but accelerate and automate the process using USPS National Change of Address (NCOA) data.
Verify Citizenship and Match with Federal Databases: Cross-check all registrations against Social Security Administration (SSA) data to identify and remove non-citizens or mismatches, addressing the 60,000+ registrations that don't align with SSA records. Implement E-Verify integration for new registrations and require proof of citizenship for all, per proposed legislation like House Joint Resolution B. This would fix systemic loopholes where non-citizens slip in via driver's license applications.
De-Duplicate Voter Records: Scan the QVF for duplicate entries (e.g., same voter with multiple IDs due to slight name/address variations) and merge or remove them. Analyses show over 800,000 potentially ineligible voters, including duplicates, which enable fraud like multiple votes. Use advanced data tools to flag and resolve these, preventing issues like the 302,380 unmatched ballots in 2020.
Regularly Remove Deceased Voters: Enhance automated cross-references with death records from SSA, state vital records, and local sources to purge deceased individuals monthly. Community groups should be enlisted to verify removals, as done in past efforts, to avoid biases and ensure thoroughness.
Reform UOCAVA Voter Verification: Limit "protected class" status under Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) to military personnel with verifiable DoD credentials; require standard eligibility checks for overseas civilians to prevent unvetted registrations lingering on the QVF. This addresses the 21,000+ overseas voters potentially exempt from scrutiny.
Enable Citizen Challenges with Documentary Evidence: Eliminate the "personal knowledge" requirement for challengers, allowing use of public records, death certificates, and databases for bulk challenges. Treat citizen-provided data (e.g., USPS NCOA) equally to clerk-gathered info, promoting uniformity under NVRA and empowering oversight to clean rolls efficiently.
Overhaul Automatic Voter Registration: Add robust verifications to the 700,000+ driver's license renewals auto-added to rolls, including citizenship checks, to prevent ineligible additions. Pause automatic processes until fixed, as they contribute to inflation and errors. Every new registration auto-added is in a verified state until verified by the local clerk.
Implement Mandatory List Maintenance Protocols: Mandate (not optional) monthly cleanups using evidence-based reforms, including door-to-door canvases where feasible and collaboration with groups like CheckMyVote.org and Judicial Watch, which has helped remove millions nationwide. Comply with HAVA audit standards and address biases in purging, as studied by Michigan State University.
