The Republican National Committee sues Michigan over the state's voter rolls

The Republican National Committee sued Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, on Wednesday in an attempt to force election officials to trim down the state’s voter rolls.

The lawsuit, which was filed in federal court, argues that Michigan is violating the National Voter Registration Act’s requirement to maintain clean and accurate vote registration rolls.

The move comes just days after Trump allies effectively took over the RNC's leadership ahead of the 2024 election.

“At least 53 Michigan counties have more active registered voters than they have adult citizens who are over the age of 18. That number of voters is impossibly high,” the lawsuit said. “An additional 23 counties have active-voter registration rates that exceed 90 percent of adult citizens over the age of 18. That figure far eclipses the national and statewide voter registration rate in recent elections.”

America’s voter roll system is built for registration, not removal. The rolls often include outdated registration as most voters do not remove themselves from the system when they move.

And while federal law requires officials take steps to keep the rolls up-to-date, it also protects voters from overzealous purges by requiring that officials wait years to remove a voter who has simply stopped casting a ballot.

Still, there’s no evidence that bloated voter rolls lead to voter fraud, even as Republicans increasingly seize on the rolls as a focus of their election activism.

Benson told NBC News in a statement that election officials in the state have "done more in the last five years than was done in the previous two decades to remove deceased voters and ineligible citizens from our voting rolls and ensure their accuracy."

She said more than