Ann Arbor area legislators, election officials respond to election security concerns at town hall

Asked about proposals that would establish strict voter identification laws in Michigan, Edevbie pointed to examples of why those are not the necessary solution to the problem. 

In Georgia, he explained, there are laws that only allow people with IDs indicating citizenship to vote — and in an audit two years ago, there were 20 noncitizens on their voter rolls. And in Arizona, when what Edevbie described as a “one-size-fits-all system” was put into place to try to eliminate noncitizen voting, 40,000 people who should have been eligible to vote were disenfranchised. 

Dingell, a Democrat from Ann Arbor, also raised her own concerns about voter ID proposals — including both the federal SAVE Act, which she defended her “no” vote on, as well as the state-level citizens-only voting ballot proposal that on Monday the Bureau of Elections suggested did not submit enough valid signatures to appear on November’s ballot.

SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX.

Specifically, she said that the federal SAVE Act would have made it difficult, if not impossible, for a woman who had changed her last name by marriage to vote without a copy of their marriage license — which she noted she does not have a copy of her own. 

“The other thing I want to add is that I worry about suppressing and disenfranchising your military and stationed overseas,” she continued. “You don’t have the ability to come back and show your ID if you’re a senior citizen who has a hard time getting to the polls.”

Washtenaw County Clerk Larry Kestenbaum also repeatedly reassured those in attendance that Michigan’s electoral system — especially when backed by poll workers, challengers and other officials from both political parties — has only gotten more secure since he took his position in 2004. 

“I should say that I’ve been involved in election administration probably longer than anyone else at this table, and I have seen this from the 70s, the 80s, the 90s into the 21st century, the election system has steadily gotten in Michigan more standardized, more exact,” he said. “The fairness and accuracy has been tremendously protected and enhanced every step of the way. Every new change has gotten more rigorous.”

State Rep. Morgan Foreman (D-Pittsfield Township), who previously worked in a clerk’s office and has experienced processing absentee and in-person ballots, also explained the process of verifying individual ballots — including checking signatures on ballots themselves to match the signature on file for a voter. 

“It’s so safe and so secure that yes, things do happen, and no, the system is not perfect, as has been said,” she said. “But the people behind it are people you can trust, and the people right now in Lansing, at least on my side of the aisle, are people you can trust to preserve your right to vote in every way.”

Edevbie also responded to numerous questions from audience members to explain the state’s procedures on ensuring the security of elections. For example, when one audience member asked why USB drives with voting data are destroyed seven days after an election, he explained that the paper voting records are kept for a full 22 months after an election and are available to the public through a records request. 

Another audience member raised concerns about voters who are deceased remaining in the qualified voter file, to which Edevbie explained that, in addition to removing those who have died based on the Social Security Death Index, anyone who has not voted in six consecutive elections is designated an “inactive voter,” and must show further proof of identity and eligibility.

“I’m not going to stand here and say, ‘Gosh, we have the most perfect system. There’s nothing wrong with it at all,’ because that would be a lie, but we have a system that works, and I would submit to you that 16 votes out of 5.7 million in 2024 is a pretty good system,” Edevbie said. “It’s a system that we can all be proud of. There’s no evidence that we have these thousands and thousands and thousands of non-citizens voting in our election. It just doesn’t exist. And if there is evidence, please report it to law enforcement because they’ll investigate it and we’ll get to the bottom of it and we’ll prosecute the people who are responsible.”

Heather Smiley, the Republican nominee to face Dingell in the November general election for Michigan’s 6th Congressional District, also took the chance to both ask a number of questions about Michigan’s election procedures as well as to attack Dingell’s voting record.

In response to her concerns about potential artificial intelligence or hacking threats to Michigan’s elections, Edevbie again noted that the paper ballots used in Michigan provide a backstop that cannot be hacked.  

Smiley, along with other audience members raising skepticism on the security of elections, repeatedly referenced a case in the 2024 election in which a Chinese citizen and student at the University of Michigan illegally voted and later faced criminal charges, though he fled the country before he could stand trial. 

“I believe that that was a very deliberate effort to vote, and that that person, individual, signed an affidavit saying that he was an American citizen and eligible to vote,” Dingell said of that instance. “I think that that was a deliberate attempt to cause people to undermine their confidence in the election. But the fact of the matter is, there were audits of millions at every affidavit, and they are verified.”

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office identified 16 cases of suspected non-citizen voting in the 2024 November general election throughout 2025, and on Thursday, announced charges against five noncitizens who allegedly cast ballots in that election.

Edevbie also noted that, because of the constitutional guarantee of a secret ballot, once a vote is cast, it cannot be discounted — though one audience member, a clerk herself, did note that poll challengers are able to flag legitimate concerns about voters that allow those ballots to be verified before they are counted. 

“I cannot put a code on every single person’s ballot so that I can go in and look at a tabulator and take it back out. That applies to people who vote legally and illegally,” he said. “But I emphasize, the 16 votes we have never had any evidence that the number of votes by a noncitizen or noncitizens changed the outcome of a statewide election. It just doesn’t happen.”