Watchdog releases review of Michigan registered voters

Michigan's Office of the Auditor General reviewed the state's 8.3 million-voter Qualified Voter File and found 99.99% had complete and valid data on file as required by law. Between January 2022 and March 2026, nearly a million registrations were canceled for legitimate reasons like death or relocation, and 403 were canceled specifically over citizenship issues.

The audit also found 2,582 ballots cast by voters who died before Election Day since 2022, but 2,561 of those were absentee ballots cast within the legal 40-day window before death, meaning most were likely cast by people still alive at the time. Separately, 653 registered voters have birthdates suggesting they're over 122, which state officials attribute to old placeholder entries rather than a horde of supercentenarian voters.

The report also caught the Department of State significantly overreporting how many people were automatically registered via driver's license transactions, an error the department blamed on a faulty script rather than the underlying data. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel separately charged five noncitizens with illegally voting in 2024, though the audit didn't determine whether any of the flagged registrants in its review actually cast ballots.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.