Federal prosecutors want nearly a million Detroit-area ballots. Michigan’s Democrats say no. The standoff could end up in the Supreme Court.
The Justice Department sent Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett a letter April 14 demanding all ballots, ballot envelopes, and ballot receipts from the November 2024 federal election in Wayne County. That’s roughly 865,000 ballots total. The DOJ set a 14-day deadline for compliance and warned that a court order would follow if Garrett’s office refused.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon signed the letter. She cited federal records-retention law and a “history of fraud convictions and other allegations” in Wayne County as grounds for the demand.
Attorney General Dana Nessel blasted the request as politically motivated. “If this administration wants to bring this circus to our state, my office is prepared to protect the people’s right to vote,” she told The Washington Post.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer called it a “poorly disguised attempt to justify more doubt and misinformation about our elections.” Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said the DOJ was making “the latest attempt to interfere in our elections.”
Nessel added a procedural wrinkle: the DOJ sent its letter to the county clerk, but the 865,000 ballots aren’t actually in Garrett’s hands. They’re held by 43 separate municipal clerks spread across Wayne County. She said the 2020 fraud allegations Dhillon used to justify the request had already been tossed out in court. A judge ruled those claims “not credible.”
Dhillon appeared Sunday on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” and made clear she’s not letting it go.
“I’ve requested the voter rolls from all states and the District of Columbia,” she told host Maria Bartiromo. “About a third of the states have voluntarily complied with us or reached settlements with us. I’m suing 29 states and the District of Columbia for their refusal to give us the voter rolls.”
She said DOJ’s review of cooperating states has already turned up 350,000 dead people on voter rolls. Another 25,000 individuals with no citizenship records have been referred to the Department of Homeland Security.
“We will not be deterred,” she said.
The Wayne County demand fits into a wider federal push into election records in battleground states. The FBI has subpoenaed 2020 voting documents from Arizona. The DOJ has gone after Fulton County records in Georgia. Courts have split on the efforts. One federal judge already rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to get Michigan’s voter rolls.
Michigan has an Aug. 2 primary coming up. Nessel argued a federal ballot review three months out would dump an “undue burden” on county election officials and said any move to seize records “will be closely scrutinized.”
