There were 1,500 souls in Garfield County, but 1,800 votes.
There was “no widespread proof of voter fraud,” just enough to trigger a thorough recount that flipped the election results.
The 1990s classic, “Black Sheep,” starring Chris Farley as the ne’er-do-well younger brother of a candidate for governor of Washington State, anticipated Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and the 2026 election.
The fictional two-term governor, played by Christine Ebersole, feels her hold on power slipping away. Farley’s character is a good punching bag, and his many public missteps keep the race close.
But the governor has one more lever to pull. She can’t raise the dead, exactly, but she can stuff the ballot box with their votes.
If there is a moral to the story, it’s that voter rolls matter. Bloated voter rolls lead to bloated vote tallies, stretched beyond possibility.
In the movies, kernels of proof lead to statewide recounts. But when is the last time you’ve seen that happen in Michigan? The best time—the only time—to catch voter fraud is before it happens. And the best way is by thinning the bloated voter rolls that fraud thrives on. The ecosystem for fraud must be killed off.
As Michigan approaches a 2026 election that Benson will administer while appearing at the top of the ballot, Sen. Aric Nesbitt, a Republican contender for the governor’s office, has asked the feds to take over.
That request comes at the perfect time. Going into Election Day 2024, Benson had 500,000 more people registered to vote in Michigan than Michigan has voting-age adults. It’s only gotten worse in recent months.
Enjoyer colleague Anna Hoffman reports that Michigan’s voter rolls have grown nearly 10% in four months, just between July and October.
For a state of 10 million that’s either growing slowly or shrinking, where did Jocelyn Benson find 750,000 new voters in just four months?
History says that answer traces back to ERIC, the Electronic Registration Information Center. Benson enrolled Michigan in ERIC her first week in office, and pays it $20,000 of taxpayer money every year to take our voter rolls.
ERIC’s cover story is that the multi-state voter roll-sharing effort helps states cull their rolls by removing duplicates.
But that’s only a fraction of ERIC’s focus. ERIC spends most of its energy identifying “eligible but unregistered” voters in member states. Once identified, ERIC member states are required to reach out to these people.
On the brink of the 2020 election, Benson said ERIC identified 700,000 eligible but unregistered voters.
That’s nearly 10% of the 2020 vote tally in Michigan, found on the eve of Election Day.
“The postcard to eligible but unregistered voters is being sent in coordination with the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), which is used by states across the country to ensure the accuracy of their voter registration lists,” Benson wrote in a Sept. 2020 press release.
That release included a quote from ERIC founder David Becker, which praised Benson for “following best practices utilized in both red and blue states.”
It noted that Becker now led the Center for Election Innovation and Research.
The very next month, Becker’s center gave $12 million to Benson’s nonprofit. Benson used it to buy commercials featuring herself.
Over the years, Benson has felt no need to address the appearance of impropriety between herself and Becker. Nobody in the Lansing media has bothered to ask about it.
Lawmakers considered pulling the funding for ERIC in the 2026 budget, but Republicans did not ultimately have the votes.
As Election Day 2026 approaches, lawmakers should relitigate the condition of its voter rolls and its relationship with ERIC.
If ERIC is supposed to thin Michigan’s voter rolls, why are they so fat?
James David Dickson is host of the James Dickson Podcast and an enjoyer of Michigan. Join him in conversation on X at@downi75.
