The Republican National Committee and the Michigan Republican Party have filed a lawsuit alleging that officials in Detroit, a Democratic stronghold, are failing to hire enough Republican poll workers to comply with state law.
The Republicans’ lawsuit asked a judge to issue an order requiring Detroit, Michigan’s largest city, to “treat equally throughout the process” the two major parties’ candidates for the post of election inspector for the November 5 election.
According to the Michigan Department of State, election inspectors are responsible for registering voters, issuing ballots, assisting with vote counting and processing mail-in ballots.
The new lawsuit, filed Thursday in Wayne County District Court, came amid an ongoing spate of election-related litigation in Michigan and was similar to a 2022 lawsuit filed by Republicans over the failure of election inspectors in Flint, another Democratic stronghold.
For the Aug. 6 primary, the Detroit Election Commission appointed about 2,337 Democratic and about 310 Republican election inspectors, according to the Republican-led lawsuit. Those numbers meant that 300 of Detroit’s 335 precincts did not meet the state’s somewhat shaky standard of having “as equal a number as possible” of election inspectors from each major political party, the lawsuit said.
“The 7.5-to-1 ratio between Democrats and Republicans, which resulted in a lack of parity in 300 of the 335 precincts, violated the Election Commission’s statutory duty to appoint ‘as equal a number as possible’ of election inspectors from each political party in each precinct,” the lawsuit continued.
The lawsuit named the Republican National Committee, the Michigan Republican Party and three local Republican Party officials as plaintiffs. The defendants included the Detroit Election Commission and Detroit official Janice Winfrey.
“The Legal Department does not comment on this pending litigation,” said Corey McIsaac, deputy director of media relations in the office of Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan.
The conduct of elections in Detroit and the partisan distribution of poll workers in cities with predominantly Democratic majorities are recurring topics of political debate in the swing state of Michigan.
Democrat Joe Biden won about 94% of the vote in Detroit in November 2020. Republican Donald Trump received about 5%, or 12,889 votes, in the city, so it hasn’t always been easy for city officials to find Republicans to attend training and job elections in Detroit.
No one tried to hinder the work of Republicans as election inspectors in Detroit, said Jonathan Kinloch, a Democrat and former member of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers.
Republicans should pick up the phone and work with Winfrey to resolve the matter, Kinloch said. Instead, the Republicans’ lawsuit is designed to create distraction and chaos in the election, Kinloch said.
“I think this is just another tactic,” said Kinloch, a Wayne County commissioner.
A report by the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee on the 2020 presidential election recommended that officials in Wayne County, where Detroit is located, “work together to recruit the right number of workers for each election.”
“The committee recognizes that the logistics of recruiting Republicans for Wayne County and the City of Detroit can be difficult, but finds repeated reports of rejected volunteers or unanswered emails troubling,” the Republican-controlled committee said in its report.
Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has made unsubstantiated claims that there was “rampant” voter fraud in Detroit in the 2020 election. And in November 2020, after Trump lost Michigan to Biden, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, claimed that Trump would win the election in Michigan if votes cast in Wayne County were not included.
In the new lawsuit, Republicans said they presented Winfrey with a list of 675 people who were interested in serving as election inspectors in Detroit, but only 52 of them were actually appointed as inspectors for the primary, the lawsuit says.
It is unclear what the city’s relationship was with the 675 people and how the courts will view the new lawsuit backed by the Republican National Committee.
A similar lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee and the Michigan Republican Party against the partisan decision-making process at the election inspection in Flint has so far been unsuccessful. The Michigan Court of Appeals ruled that the federal and state parties were not the appropriate venues for such a lawsuit.
“The laws at issue in this case merely provide county commissioners with the ability to assist election commission committees in identifying potential election inspectors who meet partisan requirements,” the appeals court said in a March decision.
However, the Detroit-focused lawsuit featured Cheryl Costantino, chairwoman of the 13th Congressional District Republican Committee, Jodie Brown, chairwoman of the Wayne County 12th Congressional District Republican Committee, and Ann Clark, chairwoman of the Wayne County Republican Committee, as plaintiffs.
In a statement, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley and his co-chair Lara Trump said Detroit’s “failure to hire Republican poll workers is the kind of malicious Democratic interference that undermines confidence in the election.”
“The RNC is suing to remedy this totally unacceptable breach of public trust, and our unprecedented election integrity campaign will continue to fight in Michigan and across the country to protect every voter’s right to a fair, accurate, secure and transparent election,” Whatley and Lara Trump added.
