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Michigan’s Court of Claims just put a hard stop on a Secretary of State rule that told local clerks to delete electronic poll books within a week. The court ordered that electronic poll books — with their original metadata intact — must be preserved and stored securely for the full record-retention period. In plain English: don’t smash the receipts before anyone can check them.
What the judge actually ordered
Michigan Court of Claims Judge Michael J. Riordan issued a statewide order blocking enforcement of Administrative Rule R 168.48. The order tells the Secretary of State’s office to instruct local clerks to transfer electronic poll book (EPB) files off precinct laptops and onto encrypted flash drives, and to keep those files with their metadata intact while the case plays out. The suit was filed by a township clerk, with the Republican National Committee and the Michigan Republican Party granted leave to intervene. The practical result is simple: EPBs are being preserved, not deleted.
Why metadata matters — and why the rule failed
The state argued that copying data into the central voter file or printing pages was enough. Judge Riordan disagreed. He said the EPB’s original files and metadata — things like timestamps and user IDs — are part of the official record the law requires be retained. When an administrative rule conflicts with a statute, the statute wins. That’s not legal poetry; it’s basic civics. So a rule telling clerks to delete files after seven days ran headfirst into the law that requires preserving records for the statutory retention period, commonly described as 22 months.
Politics, practicality and what comes next
This ruling is both common-sense and inconvenient for the political class that favored deletion as policy. The U.S. Department of Justice filed a statement of interest in the case, signaling federal attention to record-retention obligations. Expect the Secretary of State’s office to consider an appeal or seek a stay in a higher court given the stakes and the timing around a major election. Still, the court noted the practical burden is small — encrypted flash drives and a little secure storage — and far outweighed by the need for transparency and auditability.
Credit where it’s due: the township clerk who sued and the Republican parties that intervened forced a simple question — keep the records or don’t — and the court answered for clarity. If Michigan’s election officials want trust and confidence, they should stop treating administrative convenience as a substitute for the law. Keep the records. Respect the statute. And maybe, just this once, let common sense beat bureaucratic shortcuts.
