Bureau of Elections responds to Senator's questions on non-citizen voting safeguards

In the lead up to Election Day on Nov. 5, following a report of a University of Michigan student from China casting a ballot at an Ann Arbor polling place, Sen. Ruth Johnson (R-Holly) submitted a letter to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson inquiring on the state’s safeguards to prevent ineligible individuals from voting.

Johnson, who preceded Benson as secretary of state serving from 2011 through 2018, raised concerns about a mismatch between information about new voter registrations and information stored in federal Social Security records, facilitated through the Security Administration’s Help America Vote Verification (HAVV) system, inquiring as to how many of these individuals had voted, and questioned the integrity of the state’s system for same-day voter registration and provisions allowing individuals to register to vote by signing an affidavit in place of showing photo ID.

While Johnson pointed to 34,535 individuals whose name, date of birth and social security numbers did not match any record in the Social Security database, Jonathan Brater, director of the Michigan Bureau of Elections, wrote in his response Thursday that Johnson’s letter contained misconceptions on the function of the HAVV system.

“HAVV allows states to attempt to verify the last four digits of a social security number submitted by an applicant. HAVV cannot be used, is not used, and never has been used to verify the citizenship status of an applicant,” Brater wrote. “HAVV cannot be used for this purpose because it matches against the Social Security Administration database of social security numbers, and some non-citizens have social security numbers.”



https://michiganadvance.com/2024/11/21/bureau-of-elections-responds-to-senators-questions-on-non-citizen-voting-safeguards/