The Republican Party gives Detroit a list of 676 Republican election worker candidates. Detroit hires 52 off the list. //

Election officials in Detroit, Michigan need more elephants in the room to get right with the law that calls election workers to equally represent both major parties. Currently, they are hiring mostly Democrats. //

Detroit election officials hired 2,340 Democrats, 308 Republicans, and 179 “other” poll workers for the Aug. 6, primary, indicate city records obtained by the watchdog group Michigan Fair Elections and reviewed by The Federalist. The records indicate Detroit hired 2,827 total poll workers and of those, approximately 10 percent were Republicans, missing the 50 percent mark by a country mile.

It gets worse. Many Detroit “Republican” poll workers were probably not party members or voters. Michigan Fair Elections looked at Detroit poll workers labeled “Republican” to see which party they voted for in 2024 and previous years. Of the 308 on the list, they were able to identify how 143 voted.

Of those 143 identified Republican poll workers, 44 requested Democrat ballots in the 2024 Presidential primary; 35 requested Democrat ballots in two primary elections (2024 and 2022), 27 requested Democrat ballots in three primaries (2024, 2022, and 2020), and 25 requested Democrat ballots in all 4 primaries (2024, 2022, 2020, and 2018).

That’s 131 of the 143 for whom Michigan Fair Elections could find voting records. It’s a highly unusual voting pattern for Republicans politically engaged enough to become poll workers.