DETROIT — Guess who’s coming to Election Day?
After last week’s revelation a Chinese national voted in the Nov. 5 election in Michigan — and his vote will count — Republicans have continued to voice election-security concerns.
Former Secretary of State Ruth Johnson, a Republicans state senator, said the party has reason to be concerned: Nearly 35,000 people have registered to vote in 2024 whose data don’t pass muster.
“So far in 2024, there have been 34,535 individuals whose name, date of birth and Social Security numbers do not match any record found in the Social Security database,” said Johnson, who represents Holly. “That is a huge increase from previous years and very alarming to me.”
Johnson said the number in her days as secretary of state (2011 to 2019) was 54.
In just five years, Michigan went from 54 people whose records didn’t match the Social Security database to nearly 35,000.
Democrats and Republicans alike are closely watching the swing state. Donald Trump won n the Great Lakes State by about 10,000 votes in 2016 over Hillary Clinton but lost it by about 154,000 votes in 2020 to Joe Biden.
Johnson said in her time, the secretary of state would run voter-registration requests through the US Department of Homeland Security to ensure only citizens are voting.
In the time since, Michigan has embraced same-day voter registration. The illegal voter in Ann Arbor, a University of Michigan student, registered the same day he voted.
“We have no system to check if people are registering or voting who are not eligible,” Johnson added. “The only way the student at UM was caught is because he requested his ballot back from the clerk.”
State Sen. Lana Theis, another Republican lawmaker, agrees election security is a worry in Michigan. She said the problem can only be fixed the way it was created: with a voter-approved state constitutional amendment.
“We’re going to have to run another ballot question that overrides what happened in 2018 and 2022 so that we could actually require ID, which is what people thought they were voting for, and citizenship, which is what people thought they were voting for,” Theis told The Post.
Michigan’s voter rolls are chronically bloated under Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. There are only about 7.8 million Michiganders 18 or older, yet 8.4 million people are registered to vote. Republicans have sued Benson to trim the voter rolls of people who have died or moved, but those efforts have failed.
Because the illegal voter did early voting, rather than absentee, the vote was tabulated. By the time the illegal voter turned himself in to election officials, it was too late to retrieve his vote.
As of Election Day, 2.106 million Michiganders had voted absentee, and another 1.215 million took part in early voting, for a total of 3.321 million voters. To match its 2020 voting tally of 5.539 million voters in the presidential race, Michigan needs 2.218 Election Day voters.
Polling guru Nate Silver noted that if the former president wins Michigan, he would all but guarantee a win nationwide.
For the third straight cycle, Trump ended his presidential campaign in Michigan, with a speech in Grand Rapids.
Johnson ran against Benson in 2010, won and held the secretary of state office for two terms. Benson won the 2018 election and re-election in 2022.
Benson’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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