A Michigan judge has ruled in favor of the Republican National Committee, the Michigan Republican Party, and Chesterfield Township Clerk Cindy Berry in a lawsuit over how the state handles absentee ballots with mismatched identification numbers.
The case stems from a 2024 change to state election law requiring the unique identification number on an absentee ballot stub to exactly match the number on the return envelope before a vote can be counted. The dispute centered on what should happen when those numbers do not match.
Republican plantiffs argued that mismatched ballots must be rejected, though voters should be given a chance to fix the issue. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Director of Elections Jonathan Brater argued that decades-long guidance allowed those ballots to be counted as “challenged ballots” instead of being rejected.
The court rejected the state’s position, ruling that election inspectors only have authority to count absentee ballots when the identification numbers match. When there is no match, the court found there is no legal authority to tabulate the ballot under any category.
The judge said the Legislature strengthened the matching requirement to protect election integrity and that long-standing administrative practices can no longer override the updated law. The court granted relief to the Republican plaintiffs, blocking the state from counting mismatched absentee ballots under the challenged-ballot process.
