On Tuesday, voting rights lawyer Marc Elias shared the news that a right-wing lawsuit in Michigan in which the plaintiff tried to start a “purge” of voter rolls ahead of the 2020 presidential election had been officially dismissed.
🚨NEW: Right-wing voter purge lawsuit DISMISSED.https://t.co/JFsAtODGja
— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) February 16, 2021
The case’s end was voluntary, and in the filing announcing the federal case’s end, those involved noted the “current and future list maintenance activities” revealed by the office of Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D). Previously, the right-wing plaintiff in the case sought to “initiate a broad voter purge program” before the presidential election, Elias’s organization explains. This so-called purge would have included the removal of individuals from voter registration records for various reasons in the name of election security, but in reality, this effort could have easily swept up individuals who had every right to remain registered to vote in the state of Michigan.
In their original complaint, the right-wing plaintiff — a Republican named Anthony Daunt — requested, among other things, “An order instructing [state authorities] to develop and implement reasonable and effective registration list-maintenance programs to cure their failure to comply with section 8 of the [National Voter Registration Act] and to ensure that ineligible registrants are not on the voter rolls.” In reality, there is no legitimate supporting evidence for the idea that election records are out-of-date and mismanaged to the point that would allow any kind of systematic fraud. No court in the country ever accepted the idea that the 2020 presidential election was rigged for Joe Biden. The facts are unequivocally clear.
The Republican plaintiff Anthony Daunt, otherwise known as Tony Daunt, was recently appointed as one of the two Republican members on Michigan’s state canvassing board, which handles the certification of statewide election results. Daunt is the executive director of an organization known as the Michigan Freedom Fund, which The Detroit News characterizes as “a conservative policy group backed by West Michigan’s DeVos family,” meaning the family of ex-Trump administration Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
