Michigan ranks 30th nationally in election integrity report

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(The Center Square) – Michigan ranked 30th nationally in a new report examining election integrity across all 50 states.

This is according to The Heritage Foundation’s “Election Integrity Scorecard,” which was first launched in 2021.

Don Palmer, senior legal fellow for election integrity at Heritage, spoke with The Center Square about the report and its findings. He espeically flagged concerns about voting integrity.

“Non-citizen voting is obviously something that's happened across the country in almost every state, both red and blue,” Palmer said. “Take Michigan. There were a number of arrests there, and that's obviously a system that doesn't do a great job of trying to verify or identify non-citizens.”

His comments come as Michigan faces renewed debate over citizens-only voting following a recent proposal that failed to appear on the ballot, as previously reported by The Center Square.

The Heritage report evaluated each state across 15 categories that the foundation considers necessary for “fair, secure, and honest elections.” States were then ranked based on the number of points they received out of 100.

The highest-weighted categories included voter ID implementation, worth 20 points; voter registration list accuracy, worth 21 points; and absentee ballot management, worth 17 points. For this year’s report, the foundation increased the weight given to citizenship-verification laws and foreign-funding restrictions.

“Americans need and deserve a secure and transparent system in which fraud can be easily detected, and where false allegations can be dispelled,” the report said. “Election laws should be strongly enforced by state authorities to deter election crimes or fraudulent activity. Americans need and deserve a system in which it is easy to vote and hard to cheat.”

Michigan scored relatively well in all three of the highest-rated categories, though Palmer said the state could do more, particularly on citizenship verification. Michigan received zero of 13 possible points in that category.

“Michigan doesn't use any of the federal programs. They don't really initiate any sort of law that would help them verify non-citizens,” Palmer said. “But even with that being a case, they still identify some through just basic procedures at the driver's license agency.”

Palmer said ensuring only eligible voters participate in elections is essential to protecting voting rights.

“A vote by a non-citizen is really contrary to our state constitutions, contrary to federal law, and it disenfranchises someone who is eligible to vote,” Palmer explained. “It knocks out the value of their vote if a non-citizen was to vote.”

There were several other categories in which Michigan scored poorly, including election litigation procedures, restrictions on same-day voting, restrictions on automatic voter registration, restrictions on private funding of election officials or government agencies, and restrictions on foreign funding for state ballot measures, initiatives and referendums. Michigan received zero of the available points in each of those categories.

Nevada, Washington, Oregon, Vermont, California and Hawaii received the lowest scores, while Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana and Florida topped the report. Tennessee ranked first with 87 of the 100 points available.

To assist in the scores, The Heritage Foundation conducted an in-depth review of the laws, regulations, and procedures governing elections and their administration by election officials in every state.

The foundation, a conservative policy organization, said the report is designed to help voters, state legislators, election officials, and all Americans.

In that spirit, it plans to host a series of meetings with election integrity experts to assess how effectively states enforce their election integrity laws and incorporate those findings into its 2027 rankings.

“The general purpose of the scorecard is really to highlight the different conservative policies and integrity policies that help make our elections free and fair and accurate,” Palmer said. “We want to encourage people to vote. We want them to be confident, and so we wanted to lay out how the states are doing when it comes to the integrity of their elections.”