Pro-Trump election denier will lead swing state's House elections committee

State Rep. Rachelle Smit, a former local clerk who believes the 2020 presidential election was stolen from President Donald Trump, will run the Michigan House’s committee on elections under the new GOP leadership.

Smit, a Republican from Martin, was named the chair of the House’s Election Integrity Committee, as it has now been renamed. Her claims that the 2020 election was stolen have been roundly debunked but won her an endorsement from President Donald Trump, who praised her as someone “who knows our Elections are not secure, and that there was rampant Voter Fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election.”

“I absolutely think that it was stolen, yeah, and I’m not shy to say that,” Smit said in an interview with Votebeat, repeating false claims that there were “ballot dumps” in the early morning hours after Election Day in 2020.

In 2023, she argued that a group of Michigan Trump supporters charged with creating a forged slate of electors for Trump after the 2020 election, despite Joe Biden’s win in Michigan, had not done anything wrong and said that their actions were “completely legal.” She has also supported Dar Leaf, the Barry County sheriff who has gotten national attention for his efforts to investigate the 2020 election.

Smit, who also serves as speaker pro tempore of the Michigan House, was township clerk in Martin, in southwestern Michigan, before running for state office. Last session, when Democrats still controlled the House, she was the minority vice chair of the elections committee.

Now, as head of the committee, she will direct its progress over the next two years on legislation related to voting, elections, campaign finance, and more. That includes the Republican-led effort to amend Michigan’s Constitution to require voters to show proof of citizenship, which Smit is co-sponsoring. The House joint resolution, introduced Wednesday, will stop first in the election integrity committee before it likely goes before the full House.

“It’s of the utmost importance,” she said. “That’s going to be the first order of business that we take up.”

Like other Republicans in the House, Smit said she has no reason to believe Michigan’s elections aren’t secure. Rather, she said, she hopes to make clear to Michigan residents that legislators take the integrity of the state’s elections seriously.

Leader of clerks group points to successful 2024 election

Groups dedicated to expanding access to the ballot box have approached Smit’s leadership position with cautious optimism. Promote The Vote, a coalition of voting access groups that helped get 2022’s Proposal 2 in front of voters, said in a statement that it looks forward to working with her “to ensure that our elections remain secure and accessible.”

Melanie Ryska, Sterling Heights city clerk and the president of the Michigan Association of Municipal Clerks, said that her group is committed to supporting voters’ rights and the security of elections. She also wondered at what point elections officials at every level would move on from the false claims and conspiracy theories that grew out of the 2020 presidential election.

Both Ryska and Promote The Vote said that Smit’s time as a clerk was likely to give her “unique insight” into election administration in the state. But given that Michigan is just a few months past another successful presidential election, Ryska questioned the need for more expansive rewrites of election law. She said she felt local officials “answered the call,” despite a flurry of constitutional changes in recent years.

“Our clerks showed that elections are secure and that there are plenty of checks and balances in place,” Ryska said.

Smit’s other priorities for the committee include finding vulnerabilities in the state’s election laws and cleaning up laws on specific government vacancies like the one her district saw last term. When an Allegan County commissioner up for election died in August just before the primary, the remaining commissioners appointed a new member. But the law is fuzzy on who should have been on the ballot in place of the commissioner who died.

Smit introduced a bill with two other Republicans and a Democrat last year to try to address it, but it didn’t make it out of committee after legislative activity in the House effectively collapsed in the last few weeks of the year.

The Michigan Voting Rights Act, which also died late in the session after winning the support of the Michigan Senate, will not make a comeback. The package of bills would have expanded the availability of ballots in different languages and broadly aimed to prevent voter suppression, among other changes. Supporters said it aimed to fill in the gaps in the federal Voting Rights Act that have been eroded by court decisions.

Smit had expressed concerns about that package during committee hearings last session, and now that she’s leading the committee, she said she “can’t get on board” with the bills.

During a hearing on them in December, Smit said she had heard from a number of local clerks who were against it. The state’s clerks associations remained neutral on the proposals, supporting the ideas behind them but expressing concerns about funding and the additional burden on clerks who were already managing a variety of changes to election law in recent years.

“That’s a very strong message that this is not the right way about doing that,” she said last week.

Who is on the election integrity committee?

Other committee members on the Republican side include Rep. Joseph Fox, from Fremont, as the vice chair and Reps. Pat Outman of Six Lakes, Greg Alexander of Carsonville, Mike Hoadley of Au Gres, and Joseph Pavlov of Smiths Creek. Each of those representatives co-sponsored the House joint resolution that proposed the proof-of-citizenship constitutional amendment.

Democrats on the committee are Reps. Stephen Wooden of Grand Rapids, Matt Koleszar of Plymouth, and Mai Xiong of Warren. Wooden, who is in his first term in the legislature, will be the minority vice chair.

Wooden acknowledged he wouldn’t have much control over the agenda, but he told Votebeat that he looked forward to finding common ground with Republican committee members.

“I know that often, the elections committee can be a place where you see some of the most bipartisan, commonsense legislation by working with the clerks to get mechanical changes to our elections and ensure our elections are moving smoothly,” he said.

The committee is expected to meet in the coming days, although no official time has yet been set.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.

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