This article, part of MI Fair Elections’ ongoing series on the Qualified Voter File (QVF), discusses the necessity of registering or reregistering to vote with an exact, complete address.
Voter registrants in Michigan are obliged by law to submit their residence and mailing addresses. An applicant’s residence is defined as the place where they live and sleep, so it cannot be a post office or other institution that handles mail or packages. Registrants must give the relevant information for mail delivery, such as street and number or rural route, box number, and apartment number, if applicable.
The law allows each registrant to receive paperwork for in-person or absentee voting, as well as other official sent correspondence. Election authorities must have access to accurate mailing and residence information in order to help ensure free and fair elections.
So, why are over 50,000 Michigan registrants listed at incorrect addresses?
Michigan law, MCL 168.495 requires registrants to provide their residence address, including street and number or rural route and box number and apartment number, if any.
Multiple people live at the same street number and name in several types of dwellings. Due to the size of some of these facilities, such as apartment complexes, manufactured home sites, and college dorms, the United States Postal Service may be difficult to deliver mail to a voter registrant without additional information such as apartment numbers, lot numbers, and dorm rooms or mailboxes.
The Landings of Chandler Crossing in East Lansing, a largely student housing apartment complex with about 1,500 people. All residents’ mailing addresses are 16789 Chandler Rd, followed by a residence extension denoting the unit number. Each unit at The Landings is partitioned into up to four independent bedroom and bath spaces, each with its own lease.
As a result, the apartment address is supplemented by a letter designation for the room following the apartment number, such as 1221A, 813B, or 323C.
A mail carrier would struggle to deliver mail to its designated recipient if they did not have this level of classification. A accurate address at The Landings would be 16789 Chandler Rd, Apt 1221A.
Dormitories necessitate a residential extension as well. Room numbers of Michigan State University’s six-story Holmes Hall denote the level and have East and West wing designations. Mail cannot be delivered on time or accurately unless the dwelling extension is included in the address.
Bath Township’s Oak Island Village is a 250-lot mobile home neighborhood located at 16430 Park Lake Road near East Lansing. Despite the fact that the community has numerous named streets, none of which is Park Lake Rd., the mailing address for all lots is 16430 Park Lake Rd, with a dwelling extension for the lot number. Each mobile home has a lot number displayed on the outside.
While there are mailbox islands within the complex, anything requiring a signature for delivery could not be left at these islands.
The Qualified Voter File, or QVF, in Michigan, contains roughly 50,000 registrants who live in multi-unit housing units but do not have a home extension number. It is unknown how these ineligible registrations occurred or why the Secretary of State’s office is neglecting to address the issue. But one thing is certain: these registrations are illegal, and absentee ballots cannot be issued to them.
The state of Michigan’s membership in the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) was marketed to the public as a means for cleaning up voter rolls. If ERIC, a third-party, private corporation that refuses to respond to FOIA requests, is doing its job, why are Michigan’s rolls clogged with more ineligible registrations than ever after four years of membership?
Volunteers are scrutinizing voter lists in their own towns and working with local clerks to detect registration discrepancies through the efforts of election integrity organizations such as Michigan Fair Elections.
Checkmyvote.org, a database system created by two outstanding volunteers, allows free internet access to public information about Michigan’s 83 counties’ voter registers. CMV acquires the Qualified Voter File from the Secretary of State’s office once a month. The Check My Vote (CMV) team then evaluates and compares various parts of Michigan’s QVF files with the purpose of cleansing and maintaining the rolls.
Checkmyvote.org distributes this comparison data to election integrity organizations and individuals across Michigan. In addition to assisting groups and people in identifying and resolving issues in their counties, CMV allows analysts in MFE’s Soles to the lists program and other organizations to compare different months’ data and evaluate their success in assisting clerks in cleaning the voter lists.
The chart above shows information for the overall state of Michigan. This information is also readily available for each of Michigan’s 83 counties. For more information, readers may go online to Checkmyvote.org.
America will never have free and fair elections until we outlaw mail-in voting in all 50 states and territories, outlaw the use of machines to count votes, and return to in-person voting on ELECTION DAY only, with a specific VOTER ID that proves citizenship, and hand-counting of ballots by three people, with signatures of the ballots and number stubs given to the voter at the time the ballot is turned in, after which the voter’s finger is inked.
Anything less than these steps leaves the possibility of voter fraud open.
Will such changes make our elections more secure?
No, but they will make it a lot more difficult for fraudsters to get away with what they’re doing now.
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