A one-time Republican looks at voting integrity
By Kent Tisdale
As a member of a county Republican Party in the ‘90’s I would hear jokes about dead Democrats voting in Detroit and how Chicago gave Kennedy the win in the ‘60’s.
Since then, I never gave it much thought until the 2020 election and in the years that have followed.
Could it be true? Is the system really that porous?
So I looked into it. And I was surprised to see where it led me. Now I know that every politician knows what I know. The answer is obvious.
The Heritage Foundation has studied voter fraud for years.
From 1982 to 2025, their study found a total of 1,620 issues of fraudulent votes, including 100 non-citizens, two deceased voters, 251 felons and 25 non-residents. This is out of billions of votes from 45 years of voting throughout this country. (Michigan had 19 of those issues.)
The CATO Institute did a study of recent voter roll audits, looking for non-citizens. Out of 8.2 million registered Georgia voters, there were 20 non-citizens. Two out of 2.5 million registered voters in Maricopa County, Arizona, were non-citizens. No votes had been cast.
Recently in Michigan, the Macomb County clerk claimed that 15 non-citizens out of 724,000 registered voters were on the rolls.
Of those, three had a history of voting. It turns out three of the 15 were legal citizens, four had already been removed and the remaining eight had the proof of citizenship that was requested but they were flagged.
In the 2020 presidential election, there have been claims supporting both sides.
I wanted to know what happened in the court cases where real evidence was presented rather than hearsay or photo tricks or bull. Courts consistently found no evidence of misconduct or fraud, or anything that would come close to altering elections, and lawsuits were found to be frivolous.
The only logical conclusion is that the results are legit.
Is there voter fraud? The technical answer is yes, but on a scale so small that it is almost non-existent.
But still, how possible is it to create the number of votes to change an election, I need to understand how it all works.
I want fair elections, I want to stay non-partisan and avoid going down any rabbit holes of misinformation. I found myself working with some like-minded people and we hooked up with a nonpartisan organization called Michigan Country.
The Michigan Country mission is “bring people together” through community organizing and working to inform voters.
Our keystone project is the Anatomy of an Election Roadshow. Currently there are presentations scheduled in Lansing, Charlotte and Indian River with more to come.
The key to combating misinformation about our elections is education.
My group is focused on election inspectors.
It’s easy for me to see that our politicians know the election process is secure. Those politicians who won’t admit it are playing us for fools and sowing extremely harmful seeds of mistrust.
Will there be havoc created in the run-up to November? I don’t know.
I do know involvement is our cure, our healing remedy.
You can sign up at your local clerk’s office and work the election (and get paid).
If you’re into party politics, you sign up through the parties.
But if you want to stay non-partisan, then my group would love to have you help us maintain our election integrity.
Join us!
Kent Tisdale
