Republicans at a recent congressional hearing accused Michigan’s chief election official of deliberately leaving tens of thousands of dead voters on the rolls in order to encourage illegal voting.
Even at a time of intense partisan conflict over election policies, it was a strikingly direct charge against a sitting official — and one made not by a Twitter activist or even on the campaign trail, but before Congress. And it comes at a time when election officials are already facing a wave of harassment and threats stemming from false claims about voting.
But a closer look at the facts makes clear the allegation that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson knowingly kept dead people on the rolls to allow for fraud deserves extreme skepticism.
A federal judge has ordered mediation in a lawsuit brought by a conservative voting group alleging Benson, a Democrat, is violating federal law by keeping the voters on the rolls. But the suit stops well short of claiming that Benson deliberately aimed to encourage fraud — in contrast to the claim aired at the congressional hearing.
And in court filings, her office has offered a clear alternative explanation for why it hasn’t removed the voters at issue — essentially, that doing so would risk disenfranchising eligible voters.
The episode offers the latest example of how outlandish claims about voting — often seeking to vilify election officials, poll workers, or ordinary voters — have at times in recent years gone unchallenged,...
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