Michigan clerk’s ‘corrective audit’ confuses voters facing cancellation

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

Hundreds of voters have reportedly been affected by Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop’s attempt to cancel voter registrations in the small northern county, leaving voters confused and local clerks frustrated.

The Michigan Bureau of Elections sent a letter to Bishop last week accusing her of improperly changing and canceling voter registrations. Such changes “fall outside the scope” of her authority as a county clerk, the bureau wrote, and failed “to comply with the law.” Michigan law puts municipal clerks, not county clerks, in charge of voter list maintenance.

Bishop has until Thursday to respond to the state with an explanation of why she made the changes and lists of the affected voters.

Antrim County voters confused about cancellation notices

Meanwhile, the affected voters are left to wonder why they were targeted for deregistration. Barbara Mullaly, a voter in Elk Rapids, received a notice in mid-March from Bishop’s office informing her that her registration was at risk of being canceled.

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Such notices are supposed to be sent only when a municipal clerk receives reliable information that a voter has moved. But Mullaly said she’s voted from the same address for years, missing only a single small election.

“Yes, voting is a privilege and a right, but I do not have to vote,” Mullaly said. “If I don’t want to vote for four years, that shouldn’t negate my voter registration.”

The notice of cancellation she received said that if she didn’t vote “by the second November general election following this notice,” her registration would be canceled. It also included a postcard that Mullaly was supposed to send back to Bishop confirming her personal information, such as her driver’s license number.

Mullaly called Bishop to ask why she’d received the card and was told she hadn’t voted in the past two elections.

“I said, ‘Well, obviously you have this information wrong,’” Mullaly told Votebeat. “The arrogance was pretty astounding.”

Mullaly said she didn’t feel comfortable sending the card back to Bishop, so she turned it in to her township clerk instead.

“If she wants it, she can get it from my local clerk,” Mullaly said.

Mullaly is far from the only voter who received such notices in Antrim County. The deeply conservative county on the shores of Lake Michigan has about 24,700 people living in it, but each of the individual townships and villages within it have only a few thousand people at most.

That’s why it was a surprise that 250 voters in Banks Township received notices that their registrations were on the line — 19% of the township’s 1,300 registered voters. Banks Township Clerk Julie Chellis told Interlochen Public Radio that a number of those people were 18-year-olds who hadn’t voted in previous elections because they weren’t old enough to be eligible.

She told IPR it was “more frustrating than anything” and created more work for her as she tried to ensure voters’ registrations didn’t get canceled.

It’s unclear if cancellation notices went out to voters in every community in Antrim County or if some were unaffected. Mancelona Township Clerk Mike Biehl and Central Lake Township Clerk Judy Kosloski both told Votebeat on Wednesday that they hadn’t heard of any of their voters getting such notifications.

The first Biehl had heard of the concerns at all, he said, was seeing it reported on the news Wednesday morning.

“I try to stay away from all that,” he said.

Janet Beebe, Milton Township clerk, said Thursday she proactively asked Bishop to not send any notifications to her voters after hearing they were going out to other communities. Bishop seemed to respect that, Beebe said.

She first learned about the notifications in conversations with fellow clerks. County clerks aren’t always particularly close with their local counterparts, Beebe said, but Bishop’s predecessor would have at least given her a heads up, she said.

“We were blindsided,” Beebe said of the notifications going out across the county. She’s been looking for patterns in which voters received notifications, but there don’t appear to be any. In some cases, people in other communities who had cast ballots as recently as last year got the notices, Beebe said.

She hasn’t heard anything from her voters, but she’s not sure if that will remain the case. At the end of March, Bishop promised to send Beebe a list of voters in Milton Township that Bishop was considering notifying. Beebe has asked repeatedly for that list and not yet received it, she said.

Bishop argues Antrim County voter roll is bloated

Bishop has not responded to multiple requests from Votebeat to respond to the state’s letter or the concerns of voters. Her office, however, put out a public statement earlier this week that called her actions a “corrective audit” based on federal laws such as the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.

“In a high-stakes administrative environment, the risk of an over-inclusive and inaccurate voter roll poses a greater threat to public confidence than the risk of aggressive verification,” Bishop’s release said.

The release argues that she was “addressing local-level inaction” for local officials who didn’t have the money or staff required to maintain the rolls. It also disputes the state’s assertion that she should have independently verified voters’ statuses before sending the notices, arguing instead that the notices are “the trigger for verification.”

Bishop’s actions — which could lead to criminal penalties, according to the state’s letter — come after her 2024 campaign, in which she promised to clean up the county’s voter rolls. She is associated with the wing of the Republican Party that claims the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald Trump.

Bishop’s statement suggested she did not feel chastened by the Bureau of Elections’ letter. The statement argued her election “represented a decisive directive from the electorate to prioritize the stewardship and accuracy of the democratic process.”

“Victoria Bishop will ensure the 2026 electoral cycle is governed by a voter roll that is both accurate and beyond reproach after forwarding the information discovered to her local clerks for their review, determination, and final actions,” the release said.

Angela Benander, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of State, said on Wednesday that they did not consider the statement a response to the state’s letter. As of Thursday morning, the state had yet to hear from Bishop. What comes next if she doesn’t respond will be up to the Bureau of Elections.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org. Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.

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