Left: Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump listens at a business roundtable discussion at a campaign event at Precision Components Group, Monday, Aug. 19, 2024, in York, Pa. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson). Right: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer speaks at the NAACP Detroit branch Fight for Freedom Fund dinner in Detroit, Sunday, May 19, 2024 (AP Photo/Paul Sancya).
The Department of Justice on Friday said the lawsuit filed by former President Donald Trump’s campaign against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer over her establishing new voter registration locations should be dismissed because any allegations of potential voter fraud are “highly speculative.”
Trump’s lawsuit filed in July in the U.S. District Court Western District of Michigan accuses Whitmer of illegally allowing voter registration at government agencies such as the Department of Veterans Affairs and Small Business Administration. Whitmer, a Democrat, last year issued an executive directive to designate Saginaw VA Medical Center, the Detroit VA Medical Center and the department’s Detroit regional office as Voter Registration Agencies (VRAs).
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Whitmer in her directive invoked the National Voter Registration Act which Congress passed in the early 1990s. One of its requirements is that state’s must designate registration sites at government offices in addition to local clerk’s offices. But Trump, who is joined in the lawsuit by the Republican National Committee, Michigan Republican Party and a local clerk, argues Michigan law states that the state Legislature, not the governor, are the designees of VRAs.
The former president also sued the SBA and VA. The DOJ in the 35-page motion to dismiss wrote that Trump’s lawsuit “lacks standing” because it has “failed to identify any concrete or particularized injury that flows from two Federal agencies providing nonpartisan voter registration services that many Federal, State, and local offices also provide.”
In the lawsuit, Trump claims Whitmer’s directive “undermines the integrity of elections by increasing the opportunity for individuals to register to vote even though they are ineligible to do so.” The plaintiffs claim they must “deploy their time and resources to monitor Michigan elections for fraud and abuse.”
But DOJ lawyers say the plaintiffs have provided no examples of ineligible voters being registered. From the motion:
Their argument that they will be harmed rests on the “highly speculative fear” that (1) an individual not eligible to vote in Michigan will attempt to register to vote through voter registration services offered by the VA or the SBA; (2) despite that person’s ineligibility, that person’s registration would for some reason be accepted and processed but would not have been accepted and processed had they attempted to register to vote elsewhere; (3) the person will actually vote in an election; (4) against the candidate supported by the Plaintiffs; (5) there will be a sufficient number of those votes to affect the outcome of any relevant election; and (6) all of that will occur without the ineligible voter having been discovered.
The motion says the campaign’s diversion of resources claim “misses the mark” because it is hypothetical as opposed to a reality. DOJ lawyers also argue the local clerk named as a plaintiff, Ryan Kidd of Georgetown Township, lacks standing because the lawsuit provides no examples of how adding the VRAs would be confusing to him.
“Nor do they explain how that confusion, if demonstrated, would materially affect or harm Mr. Kidd’s duties as a township clerk,” the attorneys wrote. “Presumably Mr. Kidd understands how to process registrations he receives from other voter registration agencies whose designations he does not challenge.”
Trump’s lawyers have until Friday to respond to the DOJ’s motion to dismiss.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Elections Chief Jonathan Brater are also defendants in the lawsuit. As Law&Crime previously reported, Heather S. Meingast of the Michigan Attorney General’s Office wrote a response last month to the lawsuit.
“There is no more venerable group in America than our veterans. And small businesses are the lifeblood of many communities across our nation, including here in Michigan,” she wrote. “It is thus perplexing that Plaintiffs Republican National Committee, Michigan Republican Party, and the campaign for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, oppose Michigan’s efforts to provide voter registration services to veterans and small business owners.”
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