Meet Michigan's Conspiracy-Driven Mass Voter Challenge Outfit

As part of its "Soles to the Rolls" program, the Michigan chapter of Cleta Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network is going door-to-door and flooding election offices with voter challenges

Illustration by Scott Everett for Documented

The Michigan chapter of Cleta Mitchell’s national network of election conspiracy theorists is working with a thinly-sourced “voter integrity” database to engage in potentially intimidating door-to-door canvassing and to flood election offices with voter challenges, a new investigation by Documented reveals.

The project represents a crucial component of election deniers’ efforts to undermine the 2024 election.

The database, Check My Vote, has put Michigan’s publicly-available voter file online, and conducts a conspiracy-driven “analysis” to identify alleged registration discrepancies. Drawing from that analysis, activists associated with Mitchell’s Election Integrity Network are personally going door-to-door as part of their “Soles to the Rolls” project questioning voters about their registration and history, then filing dozens of voter challenges with local elections clerks across the state.

The New York Times drew from Documented’s research in a March 3, 2024 story describing the Check My Vote/Soles to the Rolls project as "an all-but-unnoticed effort that could have an impact in a close or contentious election." Historian Rick Perlstein called the piece an example of “early warning journalism,” and Rachel Maddow highlighted the story and interviewed one of its co-authors. The piece struck a nerve: Steve Bannon hosted Cleta Mitchell and other election deniers on his War Room podcast to complain about the coverage.

Like Eagle AI, the Check My Vote/Soles to the Rolls project is part of a nationwide effort by election deniers and MAGA activists to generate mass challenges to voter eligibility, which can overwhelm election clerks and create unnecessary hurdles for eligible voters to cast a ballot. Moreover, these mass challenge efforts may also feed litigation and lead to the development of conspiracy theories that undermine confidence in elections.

Alongside other strategies such as the takeover of election offices, the passage of restrictive voting laws, and the creation of election crime departments, mass challenges are a crucial component of the MAGA movement's plans to disrupt and undermine the credibility of the 2024 elections.

Learn more about Check My Vote/Soles to the Rolls—and view documents, and other material— at Documented’s website.