On Friday, Lara Trump became co-chair of the Republican National Committee, and she’s already announced her first order.
Under the former president’s daughter-in-law, the R.N.C. has created an election integrity division… and it’s sued Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.
“Now, we have the first-ever election integrity division at the RNC. That means massive resources going to this one thing,” Lara Trump said on Fox News shortly after becoming co-chair. “If people out there, Sean, don’t feel like their vote counts, don’t trust the system we have, then we are no longer the country we once thought we were.”
Two Michigan committeemen filed the suit in federal court Wednesday, and they accused Benson’s State Department of violating 1993’s National Voter Registration Act (also known as the Moter Voter Act).
“The NVRA requires States to maintain clean and accurate voter registration records. Michigan has failed to live up to the NVRA’s requirements,” the two committeemen wrote in the lawsuit.
“At least 53 Michigan counties have more active registered voters than they have adult citizens who are over the age of 18. That number of voters is impossibly high. An additional 23 counties have active-voter registration rates that exceed 90 percent of adult citizens over the age of 18. That figure far eclipses the national and statewide voter registration rate in recent elections.
Michigan’s secretary of state faced a similar lawsuit in 2020. After that suit, Michigan’s secretary of state volunteered to remove 177,000 registered voters, including voters known to have surrendered a Michigan driver’s license, and the plaintiffs dropped the suit.
However, Trump’s R.N.C. has yet to see the effect of de-registering all these voters.
“In 2020, Michigan had one county with registration rates above 100% of the voting-age population. Now it has 53,” the lawsuit alleged Wednesday.
Federal law makes it difficult for an official to remove a registered voter simply for a streak of nonvoting. On the other hand, it makes registering new voters easy.
Voters can remove themselves after moving to another county, but most don’t.
The R.N.C. has blamed the practice for leading to administrative bloat. However, some Democrats want to err on the side of protecting real voters from overzealous purges.
Take a look at Lara Trump’s remarks —
Lara Trump says the RNC will devote "massive resources" to election integrity. pic.twitter.com/j9akDkysyy
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) March 13, 2024
Benson told NBC News that she’d removed 700,000 voters already, and she plans to remove as many as 500,000 more after this year’s election.
She added that Michigan officials have “done more in the last five years than was done in the previous two decades to remove deceased voters and ineligible citizens from our voting rolls and ensure their accuracy.”
Benson, a Democrat, accused the R.N.C. of grandstanding… and she parroted the talking points of a concerned citizen.
“Let’s call this what it is: a PR campaign masquerading as a meritless lawsuit filled with baseless accusations that seek to diminish people’s faith in the security of our elections,” Benson added. “Shame on anyone who abuses the legal process to sow seeds of doubt in our democracy!”
The Horn editorial team