Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop has repeatedly told the state Bureau of Elections (BOE) that she has made no changes to the Qualified Voter File (QVF).
"As far as altering voters in the QVF records, that would be none," she said in a letter to the BOE. "I do not alter or remove people."
But records obtained by IPR show Victoria Bishop has changed the registration status of at least 14 voters. Six of those voters had their status changed to "cancel."
As the Bureau of Elections pursues an investigation into changes to Antrim County voter rolls, IPR wanted to know why county clerks don't have authority to make changes in the QVF — so we asked reporter Haley Harding, who covers elections and voting for Votebeat Michigan.
Here’s a transcription of our conversation.
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AUSTIN ROWLADER: Victoria Bishop has canceled people from the Qualified Voter File in Antrim County. Why is she not supposed to do that?
HALEY HARDING: Michigan law is very clear on what county clerks can do and what township clerks and city clerks are able to do. They [township clerks] do the bulk of the administration, the bulk of the maintenance of what's called the Qualified Voter File, which is just the fancy name for the list of every voter in the state of Michigan. County clerks, all things considered, have very little power in the state of Michigan. In other states, they actually run elections entirely, but that is not true in Michigan.
ROWLADER: There's a long process for removing someone from the voter rolls. What is that process? How does that actually work?
HARDING: The process of removing somebody is, you're supposed to send them a notice, you inform them that they're potentially going to be canceled if they do not acknowledge it. If they do not acknowledge it, eventually you do have the ability to remove them. But again, that is largely done by local clerks, not by county clerks.
ROWLADER: For Victoria Bishop, what could be some of the consequences of taking these actions with the Qualified Voter File?
HARDING: That is up to the State Bureau of Elections to decide. The state does and has used the ability to remove somebody's election administration privileges, functionally — which usually means that their deputy might run elections, or that, in particularly rare cases, the state can step in and have state officials run the elections. Which is obviously very difficult and not at all ideal, because the way the system is supposed to work in the state of Michigan is, it is supposed to be run by people who live in the community. It's one of the most beautiful things about Michigan elections — that it is run by your neighbors: the woman you see at the grocery store, the man you run into at the post office. It is not meant to be run by someone from the state.
ROWLADER: How common is this? Are there other county clerks in the state that have come under scrutiny like this? Or is this kind of an anomaly?
HARDING: No, this one is very rare. State election law is very clear on what you can and cannot do. And in my experience, the vast majority — we have more than 1600 election officials in the state of Michigan, which is county clerks and local clerks as well — the vast majority of them operate within the confines of the law. But the Bureau has been very serious about these things because the Bureau of Elections sees our elections here in Michigan as one of the most important things we have. And they're very eager to defend that, because that is their mandate.
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Hayley Harding covers voting across Michigan for Votebeat, who provides nonpartisan local reporting about elections and voting.
IPR is trying independently to obtain a complete list of voters whose status was changed by Bishop.
Victoria Bishop would not comment for this story.
This conversation was edited for clarity and brevity.
