Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson in Detroit, May 17, 2022 | Ken Coleman/Michigan Advance photo

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that alleged Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson had violated federal law by allowing thousands of deceased voters to remain on the voter rolls.

Friday’s decision by U.S. District Court Judge Jane Beckering of the Western District of Michigan rejected as “theoretical” the harms claimed by the Public Interest Legal Foundation, concluding “the record demonstrates that deceased voters are removed from Michigan’s voter rolls on a regular and ongoing basis.”

PILF is a far-right organization that has a record of making false claims about voter fraud in the U.S. The chair of its board is Cleta Mitchell, who participated in the December 2020 phone call on which Trump urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” the votes he needed to win the state. A special grand jury in Fulton County, Ga., recommended indicting Mitchell, but she was not charged.

The group filed the lawsuit against Benson, a Democrat, in November 2021 alleging Michigan was violating the National Voter Registration Act by refusing to remove 27,000 individuals from its qualified voter filed the group said were dead.

Lawyers for Benson’s office said she declined to remove the voters because doing so without confirming the accuracy of PILF’s list would have risked removing eligible voters in violation of federal voting law, which seeks to ensure voters aren’t wrongly removed.

In the opinion dismissing the case, Beckering agreed with Benson that PILF’s process for identifying deceased voters was “poorly-defined” while also noting that according to federal data, “Michigan is consistently among the most active states in canceling the registrations of deceased individuals.”

In comments made after the dismissal, Benson said that Michigan’s Bureau of Elections and clerks statewide had done more work than ever before to increase the accuracy of voter registration records.

“I’m gratified to see the courts affirm this work by dismissing this thinly veiled attempt to undermine voters’ faith in their voice, their vote, and our democracy,” she said. “This is 2024. Voters should expect more attempts to fool them about our elections to follow this failed effort. And they should know we will continue to respond to those attacks with truth, facts, and data to give all citizens confidence that every valid vote, and only valid votes, will be counted in every election.”

According to PILF’s website, the group has filed numerous lawsuits across the country requesting similar releases of voter roll information in an effort to prove illegal voting, which is extremely rare. In just the past month, two conservative groups, True the Vote and Project Veritas, have had to admit in court that they had no proof to back up their claims of election fraud.

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