Michigan Republicans scored another legal victory last week when a Michigan Court of Claims judge ordered Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to clarify incomplete election guidance. Last month, the Republican National Committee filed a lawsuit against Benson over improper guidance to local election officials that instructed clerks and election inspectors to process and count bail ballots with missing stub numbers.
On Oct. 3, Judge Brock Swartzle ordered Benson to revise page 7 of her “Election Inspectors’ Procedure Manual” that states “without exposing any votes, the election inspector should verify that the number on the ballot stub agrees with the ballot recorded for the voter in the (Qualified Voter File) Absent Voter List.” The passage, Swartzle ordered, “shall be revised” to read, “Without exposing any votes, the election inspector must verify that the number on the ballot stub agrees with the ballot number on the face of the absent voter return envelope.”
During a hearing in the case, Benson conceded that ballots with mismatched serial numbers could be the result of voter fraud, and the RNC “applauds the finding by the Court requiring … Benson to follow Michigan law requiring ballot number matching,” RNC Chairman Michael Whatley said in a statement.
