Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.The Michigan Bureau of Elections is demanding answers from a controversial county clerk who reportedly canceled or changed voters’ registrations when she wasn’t supposed to.The bureau sent a letter to Antrim County Clerk Victoria Bishop on Tuesday saying it had received information suggesting she had made voter registration changes “that fall outside the scope of your statutory authority and fail to comply with the law.”Bishop, a Republican, was first elected in 2024 on a platform of cleaning up Antrim County’s voter roll. She is associated with the wing of the Republican Party that claims the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald Trump.Michigan says Antrim County clerk canceled voter registrationsThe bureau learned that Bishop, who took office in 2025, apparently sent confirmation and cancellation notices — essentially, notices sent by election officials when they believe a voter has moved — to an unknown number of voters who didn’t vote in the last two major elections. However, the bureau noted in the letter, “Michigan law is explicit that a clerk may not cancel, or cause the cancellation of, a voter’s registration solely because a voter has missed one or two elections.”The bureau also said it has information suggesting Bishop did not independently verify the information she acted on to send the notices, as required by the state’s election officials’ manual.The letter says Bishop also allegedly changed voters’ statuses in the state voter file, known as the Qualified Voter File or QVF, to “Cancel” or “Reject” “without any agreement or delegation of authority allowing you to do so from the affected local jurisdiction.”County clerks aren’t allowed to unilaterally update the QVF or send such notices to voters, even for proper reasons. Michigan law puts local clerks — at the city and township level — in charge of maintaining voter records for their jurisdictions.The letter, signed by Bureau of Elections Director Jonathan Brater, asks Bishop to provide a detailed explanation of what she did and why, as well as a justification for her actions. It goes on to request lists of the voters to whom she sent notices and whose status she changed in the QVF.Angela Benander, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of State, said that the bureau began looking into Bishop’s actions after receiving “reports about concerning activity” from voters and local clerks alike. From there, state officials looked at the QVF and found enough irregularities to prompt the requests to Bishop.“The BOE is able to see the activity of clerks in the QVF,” Benander said.Bishop did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday evening.Antrim County is a hotbed of election conspiracy theories Controversy has swirled around Antrim County elections even before Bishop took office. The northern Michigan county was at the center of election conspiracy theories following the 2020 election, when the county’s unofficial results initially showed Joe Biden winning the heavily Republican county by a few thousand votes. The error, which occurred after ballot tabulators weren’t correctly updated, was quickly corrected, but Trump and others seized on the mistake as evidence that voting machines were rigged against him.In the 2024 election, Bishop defeated the county clerk who had overseen the error by pledging to “restore election integrity in Antrim County.” During that campaign, Bishop said she believed “we still have dead people and people who no longer live in Antrim County” on the voter roll and promised to work with local clerks to remove them before the 2026 election. Bishop is married to Randy Bishop, a conservative talk radio host best known as “Trucker Randy” who has claimed to have evidence that the 2020 election was stolen. Antrim County will hold a few small elections in May, but township clerks will do the vast majority of the work to oversee those.But if Bishop is unable to provide the requested information to the state, it could be the first step in ultimately stripping her of her election-related duties. The state has done it before — Stan Grot, the Shelby Township clerk, only recently had his own authority reinstated after being accused of election-related felonies. Other local clerks were removed just before the 2024 election for telling state officials they planned to hand-count ballots. It is also possible Bishop could face criminal charges. The letter notes that failure to “obey a lawful instruction given by the Secretary may result in a criminal misdemeanor.” It wouldn’t be Bishop’s first brush with the law; last year, the Michigan Department of State reprimanded Bishop for filing incorrect campaign finance disclosures, and a judge found her in contempt of court.Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.
