Michigan Judge Rejects Republicans’ Effort To Disqualify Certain Overseas Voters
A Michigan judge rejected the Republican National Committee (RNC)’s lawsuit challenging the ability of certain overseas voters to cast absentee ballots and have their votes counted in the battleground state this election.
Judge Sima Patel concluded the RNC and Michigan Republican Party filed suit too close to the upcoming election, which is just over two weeks away. At a hearing last Thursday, Patel raised concerns about the prospect of “disenfranchise[ing] an entire group of citizens,” as the RNC had requested.
The GOP has filed two other lawsuits challenging the rights of overseas voters — one in Pennsylvania and another in North Carolina.
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A legal principle known as laches “bars this 11th hour attempt to disenfranchise these electors in the November 5, 2024 general election,” Patel wrote in today’s ruling. The order also rebuffed the merits of the RNC’s legal arguments and held that Michigan’s current rules for overseas voters comport with state and federal law as well as the state constitution.
In an Oct. 8 complaint, the Republican plaintiffs sought to disqualify a subset of overseas voters who are the children, dependents or spouses of previous Michigan residents, but who have never themselves lived in the state.
The suit specifically took issue with guidance from Michigan Secretary of State Joceyln Benson (D) allowing qualified U.S. citizens living overseas who have never resided in Michigan to vote there provided that they are not registered in another state.
According to the RNC and MI GOP, the guidance ran afoul of the Michigan Constitution, which they contend requires voters to have lived in Michigan at one point. The Republicans also said that while a federal law known as the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) ensures military and overseas voters may vote absentee, it does not cover voters who have never resided in the U.S.
“Counting ballots of ineligible overseas voters who never resided in Michigan will result in an inaccurate tally of votes. Moreover, overseas voters overwhelmingly support Democratic candidates,” the lawsuit argued.
Attorneys for the RNC asked the court to “segregate” ballots from overseas voters who never lived in Michigan, saying that doing so “would not be a large burden.”
But state election officials said setting aside ballots would be extremely disruptive and even asked the court to impose sanctions on the Republicans for filing a “frivolous” lawsuit. The state said in a court filing that it has already sent out nearly 17,000 UOCAVA ballots ahead of the Nov. 5 general election.
In a rebuke of the RNC’s arguments, Patel determined that the “challenged language in the Secretary of State Election Officials Manual…is consistent with federal and state law, and the Michigan Constitution,” but she ultimately denied the state’s request for sanctions.
Republicans have mounted similar challenges to military and overseas voting in a spate of recent lawsuits out of Pennsylvania and North Carolina — both battleground states. The new legal actions came after former President Donald Trump railed against overseas voting, alleging without evidence on his Truth Social platform that Democrats will “use UOCAVA to get ballots, a program that emails ballots overseas without any citizenship check or verification of identity, whatsoever.”