The Prophet

You don't need to be a lawyer to understand this one… when somebody fights this hard to keep the right to delete something, it is because of what is on it. Here is what happened in Michigan. Bridgewater Township Clerk Michelle McQueer had a simple question for Jocelyn Benson's office. Benson's own rule, R 168.48, says clerks must delete the electronic poll book files seven days after certification, while federal law, 52 USC 20701, says election officers must keep those records for 22 months and willfully failing to do it carries up to a year in federal prison. So which law does she follow? She asked in October of last year. She waited. She asked again. Nothing. Months of silence from the person in charge of Michigan elections, so she sued in August, got a restraining order, and she is now the only clerk known to still have her August 4 poll book file. Every other clerk's August file is already gone. Then on Tuesday Judge Michael Riordan expanded that order statewide and told Benson to instruct every clerk in Michigan to move the November 3 poll books onto encrypted flash drives and lock them up until the court decides. DOJ filed a statement of interest saying poll book data, metadata included, are federal election records. And a data manager in Benson's own Bureau of Elections admitted under oath that the actual precinct lists poll workers use on Election Day never get uploaded to the state database, they get rebuilt later from a change log. So the "don't worry, it's all saved somewhere" argument just fell apart in her own affidavit. And what does Benson do? She runs to the Court of Appeals with an emergency application, skips asking the trial judge for a stay first because it "would not be expedient," and asks them to waive the rule that says she has to. McQueer's lawyer Kevin Kijewski put it perfectly… she "asks leave to destroy the evidence while the court decides whether destroying it is lawful." The cost to Benson's office of obeying the order is one memo. The cost to a clerk who deletes is a federal statute with a jail term. Now keep in mind this is the woman running for governor of Michigan. How do you campaign on protecting democracy while fighting in court for the right to erase the record of the election you are running in? Who benefits when the list poll workers actually saw on Election Day only exists for seven days? I know this movie. Tina Peters got nine years in Colorado over backing up her county's election system before an update wiped it, and the media called her the threat. Michelle McQueer did it the right way, she asked, she waited, she went to court, and the Secretary of State still wants the files gone. Preserve the records. All of them. For 22 months, like the law says. Jocelyn, if there is nothing on those poll books, you should be the one begging to keep them.