Michigan voter data doesn’t prove fraud in Gretchen Whitmer’s 2022 reelection victory

In May 2026, social media users alleged statistics proved fraud in Michigan’s 2022 gubernatorial election by showing more registered voters than the state’s voting-age population. Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer won a second four-year term in November 2022.

Users shared the claim — including some specifically mentioning fraud — on Facebook, Threads and X. One popular Instagram post included a photo of Whitmer overlaid with the words, “Possible Michigan voter fraud comes to light!”

(@davidjharrisjr accessed via Instagram)

The posts had a caption reading:

BREAKING: Gretchen Whitmer won Michigan by 469,870 votes in 2022.

Michigan had 586,231 more voters than eligible voting age citizens.

Michigan reported 8,226,745 registered voters in 2022.

Michigan’s citizen voting-age population was 7,640,514.

In short, this rumor was false. 

The posts failed to take into account the way the Great Lakes State maintains voter rolls using two metrics: total registered voters and active registered voters. Michigan reports a slightly higher number of total registered voters than voting-age residents because state and federal laws mandate waiting periods before officials can remove inactive voters — including, for example, people who may have moved, died or not responded to mailings — from rolls.

Politico reported Whitmer won reelection in 2022 by a margin of nearly 470,000 votes, with around 4.5 million people voting. The Michigan government’s website reported that in that year the state had 7,297,900 active registered voters and 8,226,745 total registered voters, with a voting-age population of 7,924,418. The U.S. Census recorded Michigan’s total population as more than 10 million.

Snopes emailed the Michigan State Department and Michigan Bureau of Elections seeking comment about this matter and will update this article if we receive further information.

Why social media posts don’t prove fraud

The Michigan government’s website features in-depth information regarding the maintaining of the state’s voter rolls (displayed under “Michigan has 7.3 million active registered voters”), including how the law requires inactive voters to remain in the system for several years (emphasis theirs):

When election mail (such as a voter information card or absent voter ballot application) sent to a voter by a clerk is returned by the U.S. Postal Service as undeliverable, clerks use this as initial information that the voter may have moved. The clerk sends a notice of cancellation to the voter’s address in Michigan. If the voter does not respond and does not have any voting activity by the second even-year federal election following the notice, the voter’s registration is cancelled. State and federal law require voters who are inactive because they may have moved to stay on the rolls until the 2-federal cycle waiting period has passed – a period of time that could be up to four years.

By March 2025, the Bureau of Elections and clerks across the state had canceled more than 1,412,750 voter registrations since 2019. This included 635,052 voter registrations of people who had died, 588,247 registrations belonging to those who had received a cancellation notice based on a change of residency and did not respond to the notice or engage in voter activity in the two-federal-cycle period, and 18,489 registrations for people who requested to have their own records canceled. As of April 2025, there are more than 266,905 voter registrations slated for cancellation in 2027 or 2029.

Any registered voter who has not cast a ballot in six years or more is moved to “inactive” status. There are additional inactive registrations in QVF [Qualified Voter File] that may belong to voters who have died or moved, but election officials cannot take steps to cancel these registrations unless they receive affirmative information showing they have died or moved. Legislation has been proposed to create additional ways for election officials to identify, notify, and eventually cancel inactive voters under Michigan law.

The National Conference of State Legislatures reported, “Voters often fail to respond to address confirmation mailings. In these cases, election officials may designate the voter as inactive in the registration system. If a voter remains inactive through the next two general elections — four years — only then can election officials remove them from the rolls.”

New Michigan rule

In April, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson reported progress in removing more than 2.1 million outdated voter registrations since 2019. In a video and news release, she attributed 180,000 of those canceled registrations to a new administrative rule:

A new rule has gone into effect that will for the first time help us clear a large backlog of inactive decades old voter registrations. Many people who are registered choose not to vote, sometimes for several election cycles. And every election, a few thousand of these inactive voters do show up to vote for the first time in years. But others have moved away or passed away. And despite our repeated attempts to change Michigan law, we just didn’t have the legal tools to cancel those dormant, inactive records. So with this new rule, now we do.

If someone hasn’t voted in the last 20 years or longer, we can now start the process to cancel their registration. After receiving a notice from our department, that person has two federal election cycles to either verify their status or vote in an election. If they don’t do either of those things in that time, we will take them off the voter rolls.

For further reading, we previously reported about a false rumor claiming officials arrested Whitmer and charged her with treason.

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