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David Nicholas: WCMU recently spoke with Votebeat reporter Haley Harding over allegations that the Antrim County clerk in Northwest Michigan tampered with voters' rolls. Now, reporter Austin Rowlader with the Northern Michigan Journalism Collaborative has confirmed that at least six people have had their voter registration status canceled in the qualified voter files by the clerk, Victoria Bishop. I recently spoke with Rowlader on the latest developments.
She had denied making any changes and she has also refused to comply, your reporting says, to provide any complete list of changes that were done. And so is there action now that would be taken? Do we anticipate from the Bureau of Elections when it comes to dealing with Victoria Bishop?
Austin Rowlader: Yeah, the ball really is in the Bureau of Elections court. At this point, we don't know exactly how they're going to react to this. This is a pretty unprecedented occurrence. And so there isn't a whole lot of things that we can go by to understand exactly what might happen to Victoria Bishop. But yeah, so we're waiting on the Bureau of Elections to respond to her. She still hasn't provided a list, like you said, of everybody who's been changed in the qualified voter files.
DN: What would entail getting those folks canceled by Bishop's action back on the qualified voter files, allowing them to vote in either the primary or the general election in November?
AR: We have a primary election coming up August 4th in Antrim County. And I talked to Haley Harding, who you mentioned. She's with Vote Beat. She knows a lot about elections. And basically what she said is that you can register, re-register to vote if your voter registration gets canceled. You just have to go into your township clerk's office and let them know that you still want to be register to vote. And that can happen all the way up until election day.
Also coming up to issue is the fact that the township clerks are now confused and they don't know exactly how to proceed because they're not, the county clerks aren't supposed to be messing with their qualified voter files. All of this is supposed to be happening through the township clerks. And so she's introduced this element of confusion in the ranks of the township clerks in Antrim County.
DN: Is this a legal question or police action, Secretary of State action? What might be the next step?
AR: Yeah, so the Bureau of Elections has mentioned that they could pursue misdemeanor charges. They could also remove her ability to administer the elections. Like I said, we're kind of waiting to see what their response is going to be.
But the Bishop’s, Victoria Bishop and then her husband, Randy Bishop, who has a conservative talk radio show, they are currently raising money in order to go on the offensive on this. They're going to hopefully, they hope to file a lawsuit against Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and the Bureau of Elections. They're raising money for that right now. And so there's a lot of mudslinging, we'll call it, back and forth between Victoria Bishop, the Antrim County Clerk's Office, the Bureau of Elections, and the Secretary of State. And so we're just kind of at the moment like watching this tennis ball go back and forth into each other's court.
DN: Austin, thanks very much for your reporting on this and taking the time to update us as well.
AR: Thanks for having me on, David. I'm happy to keep you informed on everything going on up here in Antrim County.
DN: Austin Rowlader is with the Northern Michigan Journalism Collaborative. This reporting made possible by the Northern Michigan Journalism Collaborative, led by Bridge Michigan and Interlochen Public Radio and funded by Press Forward Northern Michigan.
Victoria Bishop declined to comment on this story.
