Election officials in Detroit, Michigan need more elephants in the room to get right with the law that calls election workers to equally represent both major parties. Currently, they are hiring mostly Democrats.
Poll workers handle ballots and are well-placed to speak up if anything seems out of order. They are an important part of election integrity infrastructure.
Many states have laws requiring counties to hire an even mix of election workers to create poll worker parity, with a goal of, as close as possible, 50 percent Democrat and 50 percent Republican poll workers. That’s the case in Michigan, where the law requires election commissioners to “appoint an equal number, as nearly as possible, of election inspectors (aka workers) in each election precinct from each major political party.”
But in the city of Detroit, where the heavily Democrat vote take can outweigh the Republican-leaning vote in the rest of the state, approximately 10 percent of poll workers hired for the Aug. 6 primary were Republicans, according to city records obtained by a watchdog group.
“Our constitution was founded on the concept that checks and balances are the best way to ensure fairness,” Patrice Johnson, a founder and chair of Michigan Fair Elections, told The Federalist. “That’s why you have two parties that are supposed to be at the polls, working the polls, for checks and balances. When you don’t have a fair balance like that, you don’t have the checks and balance system working. That’s so critical.”
80 Percent Off What the Law Requires
Detroit election officials hired 2,340 Democrats, 308 Republicans, and 179 “other” poll workers for the Aug. 6, primary, indicate city records obtained by the watchdog group Michigan Fair Elections and reviewed by The Federalist. The records indicate Detroit hired 2,827 total poll workers and of those, approximately 10 percent were Republicans, missing the 50 percent mark by a country mile.
It gets worse. Many Detroit “Republican” poll workers were probably not party members or voters. Michigan Fair Elections looked at Detroit poll workers labeled “Republican” to see which party they voted for in 2024 and previous years. Of the 308 on the list, they were able to identify how 143 voted.
Of those 143 identified Republican poll workers, 44 requested Democrat ballots in the 2024 Presidential primary; 35 requested Democrat ballots in two primary elections (2024 and 2022), 27 requested Democrat ballots in three primaries (2024, 2022, and 2020), and 25 requested Democrat ballots in all 4 primaries (2024, 2022, 2020, and 2018).
That’s 131 of the 143 for whom Michigan Fair Elections could find voting records. It’s a highly unusual voting pattern for Republicans politically engaged enough to become poll workers.
Of course, Detroit is a mostly Democrat city. You can’t swing a dead donkey without hitting a Detroit Democrat. But poll workers can be hired from anywhere in the state, so it’s not like the city couldn’t find Republicans.
In fact, Michigan law makes it easy to find party members by involving the parties. By May 15 each year, “The county chair of a major political party may submit to the city or township clerks in that county a list of individuals who are interested in serving as an election inspector in that county,” the law reads.
‘Broken Process’
The Republican Party provided the City of Detroit with a list of 676 Republican election worker candidates in May 2024, but the city hired only 52 of those on the list, Michigan Fair Elections says.
“This is their process, and it’s the same, whether it’s for the primary or for the general, and it’s broken,” Johnson said.
Gates McGavick, senior advisor to Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley, told The Federalist the Republican Party is not ignoring the skewed hiring of poll workers, and is working to recruit more Republican poll workers.
“We are very aware of the poll worker parity issue in Detroit and gathering necessary information as we weigh our legal options to remedy the situation,” McGavick said. “We sued Flint, Michigan over that city’s failure to hire Republican poll workers, and have sued counties in Arizona and Nevada over this same issue. Poll worker parity is a key plank of our election integrity litigation operation, which has engaged more than 100 lawsuits this cycle alone.”
The Federalist asked the Detroit Department of Elections why it didn’t have a 50-50 mix of poll workers. The person who answered the phone at the DDE said the question should be directed to Michigan’s Department of State, although poll workers are hired at the local, not state level.
Of the four email addresses dedicated to press requests at the Department of State, not one responded to The Federalist’s questions sent Thursday at 1 p.m. Michigan time.
Poll worker parity has been out of whack in Detroit for years, always to the benefit of Democrats, according to statistics provided to Michigan Fair Elections by the city. Check out these jaw-dropping numbers derived from spreadsheets of city election data Michigan Fair Elections obtained and sorted. The Federalist reviewed the spreadsheets, which include column headers and a few possibly duplicate entries, so these numbers may have a small margin of error.
2024 Primary Election: 2,827 total workers
2,340 Democrats
308 Republicans
179 Other
2022 General Election: 4,715 total workers
331 Republicans
3,078 Democrats
1,306 Other
2022 Primary Election: 5,270 total workers
501 Republicans
3,373 Democrats
1,396 Other
2020 General Election: 5,486 total workers
170 Republicans (3 percent of the total)
3,393 Democrats
1,923 Other
Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.
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