On the night of the 2020 election, a small error caused the publication of incorrect results showing that Joseph R. Biden Jr. had won the heavily Republican county. The county’s clerk at the time, Sheryl Guy, who had just cast her own ballot for Mr. Trump, explained her mistake and quickly corrected the tally. But then a team of lawyers and computer experts working to help Mr. Trump challenge Mr. Biden’s win across the country descended on Antrim and produced a report claiming that the election there showcased errors in voting machines. The report was quickly debunked, but that didn’t stop it from gaining steam, garnering mentions in speeches from Mr. Trump and his allies and in lawsuit filings.
Eventually, the Antrim machine conspiracy theory was eclipsed by other falsehoods. But locally, the effects reverberated. In 2024, Ms. Guy lost her re-election race to Victoria Bishop, the wife of a far-right radio personality known as “Trucker Randy” Bishop. Ms. Bishop, with support from her husband, had campaigned on the pillars of the election-denial movement, including claims of vast problems with dead people on the voting rolls and the promise to train township clerks to hand-count ballots.
Since taking office, Ms. Bishop and her husband have continued to ignite false theories.
This year, she began removing voters from the rolls and flagging others to local clerks in her region, according to the secretary of state’s office. This came after she sent notices to voters she determined may have moved out of state or died. She said her analysis was based on change-of-address forms filed with the post office, along with a lack of voting in multiple elections. She relied in part for her analysis on a group run by election-denial activists, according to a statement by the group.
The Michigan secretary of state’s office, run by a Democrat, Jocelyn Benson, who is running for governor this year, explained to her that county clerks lack the authority to cancel voter registrations unilaterally and that list maintenance falls under the jurisdiction of clerks who work at the township and municipal level. In June, the state ordered her to take compliance training and cut off her access to voter records until she does. In addition, the Michigan State Police opened a criminal investigation in February after Mr. Bishop was spotted during a public meeting using Ms. Bishop’s work computer, according to a copy of a police report viewed by The Times.
Ms. Bishop’s office released a statement earlier this year framing her work as legal and necessary to ensure clean voter rolls. “This initiative is the fulfillment of a specific mandate to rectify long-standing vulnerabilities in the county’s registration data,” the statement said.
