Former President Donald Trump’s campaign is facing yet another election integrity issue in a battleground state. Concerns have resurfaced in Michigan following a sudden and contentious change to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) disclosure policy by the Michigan Bureau of Elections (BOE).

Under the direction of the state’s Democratic Secretary of State, the BOE has restricted access to crucial absentee ballot information. Election integrity organizations argue that this move will undermine transparency and accountability in the upcoming 2024 elections.

On Tuesday, the Michigan Bureau of Elections (BOE) notified organizations that typically oversee absentee voter data, including CheckMyVote.org and Michigan Fair Elections, that key data points essential for election monitoring and audits would no longer be accessible through FOIA requests.

These restricted data fields encompass information about absentee ballot applications sent and received, as well as details on ballots returned by voters, but critics argue that the change eliminates crucial transparency, further complicating efforts to verify the integrity of the voting process, according to Pure Integrity Michigan Elections.

 “I don’t see the reasoning behind these changes. The BOE cites voter privacy as the reason, but the date the application is sent and returned has nothing to do with voter privacy,” said Phani Mantravadi, CEO of Check My Vote.

Mantravadi added that removing these data fields restricts watchdog groups from tracking whether ballots were properly sent, received, and returned. Without this information, verifying the legitimacy of the absentee voting process becomes nearly impossible.

Patrice Johnson, chair of Michigan Fair Elections, emphasized a significant risk associated with changes to absentee ballot addresses.

“A citizen’s vote could hypothetically be stolen simply by redirecting the ballot to be delivered elsewhere. When the voter goes to the polling place, they could be told they can’t vote because they’ve already cast an absentee ballot,” Johnson warned. 

Phil O’Halloran, the Election Integrity Chair for District 9, likened the BOE’s new policy to the contentious actions taken during the 2020 Detroit election, describing it as the “digital equivalent of plastering pizza boxes on the windows at the TCF Center.”

O’Halloran referred to the well-known 2020 incident where concerns about transparency arose regarding the handling of absentee ballots during the vote-counting process.