Antrim County residents had their first chance Thursday to address county officials about a recent controversy over voter rolls.
The state is investigating the way new county Clerk Victoria Bishop has handled voter registration, which has included mailing postcards to 8 percent of the county's voters asking them to confirm their address.
Bishop won her seat in 2024, after campaigning on a platform of hand-counting every ballot on election days and scrubbing dead people from the voter rolls.
She was at the front of the room during public comment at Thursday's regularly scheduled county commission meeting.
Hear more about this from reporter Claire Keenan-Kurgan in this episode of the Up North Lowdown, IPR's daily news podcast.
Resident Ashley Areeda said cards mailed out asking people to confirm their registration have created unnecessary fear and uncertainty.
"This county deserves better than confusion, division and distrust. We deserve stability. We deserve professionalism, and we deserve election processes that strengthen public confidence instead of weakening it," Areeda said.
Others defended Bishop and said this is exactly why she was elected in 2024: to clean up voter rolls.
"We all want to make sure we have accurate, qualified voter files and I think that's partially why Vicki was elected," said Elk Rapids resident Corky Crimmons.
"To the board, I want to say thank you for listening, and to Victoria Bishop ... thank you for doing the job that we voted you in for."
Bishop is married to Randy Bishop, a popular conservative radio host in northern Michigan, who was one of the leading voices casting doubt on the 2020 election results in Antrim County and the rest of Michigan.
The Michigan Bureau of Elections has said that if Bishop does not stop her attempts to change the voter files, she could face criminal charges.
Under Michigan election law, voter rolls are maintained by local clerks, not county clerks. And the Bureau says missing two recent elections — part of the justification used in questioning registrations — is not sufficient grounds to question or change someone's registration status.
A letter from the Bureau to Bishop says “Michigan law is explicit that a clerk may not cancel, or cause the cancellation of, a voter’s registration solely because a voter has missed one or two elections.”
Some of the people who received postcards questioning their registrations were too young to vote two elections ago.
As of Thursday night, IPR’s reporting had confirmed six people whose voter status was changed by Victoria Bishop. That’s according to township clerks, who have urged Bishop not to send the cards.
In Milton Township, Clerk Janet Beebe confirmed that she has identified one voter in her files and she's going to be doing a more thorough check in the coming days to see if there are more.
That puts the count at three in Banks Township, two in Elk Rapids Township, and one in Milton Township.
The Bishops have threatened to sue the state of Michigan as well, including Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.
According to a Votebeat report last week, Randy Bishop said on his show, “Vicki just made the decision ... ‘Somebody’s got to stop [Benson]. Somebody’s got to stop her.’ I said, ‘Well, why not you?’”
IPR's Austin Rowlader contributed to this report.
