Sarah DeBoer, the clerk of Climax Township in Kalamazoo County, Michigan, posted a video on August 24 directly addressing federal authorities. She introduced herself by name, stated her title, and made a simple request: help verifying the citizenship status of people on her voter rolls. Absentee ballots go out on September 24.
She's not the first Michigan clerk to do it. She's the second in four days.
Three days earlier, on August 21, Barry County Clerk David Olson posted his own video laying out the same problem — and going further. Olson explained that when a non-citizen changes their address through the state system, "programming automatically registers that citizen to vote." He said the state's position was that it would be "caught downline by the clerks." His response was blunt: "That is not correct! Once it's in the qualified voter file, there's no way for me to verify citizenship!"
That's the core of it. Local clerks in Michigan are telling you, on camera, with their names attached, that they have no mechanism to verify whether the people on their voter rolls are legally allowed to vote. DeBoer said it plainly: "Local clerks have zero ability to verify the citizenship status" of registered voters. Zero. Not limited ability. Not reduced capacity. Zero.
Olson went a step further by citing the specific Michigan statutes governing voter registration — MCL 168.515 and MCL 168.520 — and federal law under 18 U.S.C. § 611, which makes it unlawful for non-citizens to vote in federal elections. He also referenced the SAVE Act, the proposed legislation that would require proof of citizenship for voter registration. The laws exist. The enforcement doesn't.
Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf backed Olson's efforts, and Olson publicly invited federal authorities to his office. "I will safeguard my voter roll in the office, but they are certainly welcome to come and compare against mine," he said. "I would be welcome to have them here." A county clerk opening his doors to the feds and asking them to audit his rolls. That's not obstruction. That's a dare.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson has not responded to either video. Which tracks. When the people doing the actual work of running elections start going public about a system that can't distinguish citizens from non-citizens, the person at the top of that system tends to get very quiet.
This is part of a growing pattern of local election officials breaking ranks ahead of the midterms. These aren't political operatives. They're township clerks. The kind of people who process absentee ballot requests and maintain voter files. They don't usually make videos.
The fact that they're making them now tells you something. The state won't fix the system. The feds haven't acted. So the clerks are going around both and talking directly to the public. They're naming the statutes. They're showing the gap. And they're doing it with thirty days until absentee ballots hit mailboxes.
When the people responsible for running your elections tell you, on the record, that the system can't verify who's eligible to vote — and the people responsible for building that system say nothing — the question isn't whether there's a problem.
It's how long the silence holds.
