Election lawyer J. Christian Adams said he had a brief encounter on Election Day with Michigan’s Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, who his organization has sued over voter roll maintenance regarding the names of more than 25,000 dead people.  

Adams is president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, an election integrity watchdog group. 

“She’s doing a tour of the state with a Washington Post reporter, which I’m sure is a team effort,” Adams told The Daily Signal in a phone interview on Hamtramck, Michigan.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation sued Michigan over Benson’s refusal to remove the names of 26,000 dead people from voter registration lists. Of those, almost 4,000 had been dead for over two decades; 17,479 were dead for more than a decade; 23,663 had been dead for at least five years. 

The encounter between the two was friendly, Adams said. 

“She is no slouch. She has class even if she is not a good secretary of state,” Adams continued. 

Adams said he did not bring up the lawsuit or the names of the deceased on voter rolls.  

Neither Benson’s office or Washington Post immediately responded to emails for comment.

The legal foundation sent a team election lawyers to Michigan to observe that local election officials in the state comply with federal and state election laws. 

The foundation’s poll observers will memorialize compliance with election laws, Adams said.

When the federal lawsuit over the voter rolls was first filed in late 2021, Jake Rollow, the office’s chief of external affairs, told The Daily Signal in an email: “Michigan maintains its voter registration list in accordance with all state and federal laws, including provisions for deceased voters. We have not yet seen such a lawsuit and cannot comment.”