Republicans sue Michigan to make it easier to disrupt ballot counting and challenge voters in the midterms

By Matt Cohen

FILE - A Republican election challenger at right watches over election inspectors as they examine a ballot as votes are counted into the early morning hours, Nov. 4, 2020, at the central counting board in Detroit. Election officials across the country are bracing for a wave of confrontations in November as emboldened Republican poll watchers, many embracing former President Donald Trump's conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, flood polling places for the general election. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)

The Republican National Committee (RNC) sued Michigan Sec. of State Jocelyn Benson (D) Tuesday to block protections that make it harder for partisan poll challengers to interrupt the state’s ballot-counting process. 

The lawsuit sends an ominous signal that the GOP will pull out all the stops to disrupt vote counting and challenge voters’ eligibility this fall.

At issue is guidance on poll challengers issued by Benson in Oct. 2024, which was added to Michigan’s administrative rules in May 2026. The RNC claims that the new rules — which limit the number of poll challengers at each location and make it harder for them to lodge frivolous challenges that delay or disrupt the ballot-counting process — violate Michigan law and are part of a broader Democratic ploy to undermine elections. 

“Jocelyn Benson is trying to sideline the citizens who help keep elections transparent,” RNC Chairman Joe Gruters said in a statement. “Michigan voters deserve oversight, not secrecy, and the RNC will fight every Democrat attempt to weaken election integrity.”

Poll challengers — who differ from poll watchers and poll workers — are citizens appointed by political parties and nonpartisan groups to observe the ballot-counting process at polling places. Unlike poll watchers, challengers have the authority to challenge a voter’s eligibility or question election administration procedures if they have good reason to believe something is amiss. 

Benson, who is running for governor, issued new guidelines for poll challengers in 2024 in response to a 2020 incident in which chaos erupted at a Detroit vote-counting center after Republicans were told the facility was at capacity for poll challengers. The GOP had nearly twice the allowed number of challengers at Detroit’s TCF Center, observing ballot tabulation, but when election officials wouldn’t let any more challengers in and locked the doors, Republican officials who were denied entry became angry, and police were called in to keep the crowds back. 

Benson’s guidelines include limits on the number of challengers stationed at polling places and vote-counting centers, a ban on challenging the eligibility of absentee ballots, and clearer guidance for removing challengers repeatedly making frivolous challenges that don’t pass legal muster — in order to delay or disrupt the ballot-counting process. 

The RNC wants a state court to overturn Benson’s new poll challenger rules. That would make it much easier for the GOP to disenfranchise voters by successfully challenging their eligibility, and to delay the vote-counting process in a pivotal swing state this fall.