Republicans repeat election fraud claims in 7-hour hearing, but ‘we are learning nothing new,’ Dems say

December 1, 2020 2020 election

One month after Michigan voters cast their ballots and one week after election results were officially certified, lawmakers spent seven hours taking testimony Tuesday from disaffected Republicans who claimed widespread fraud and misconduct in the state.

Dozens of people — the vast majority of whom were Republicans concerned with how Michigan’s ballot-counting process was handled — repeated allegations of voter fraud in the November 2020 election to the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee.

Many rehashed assertions made by President Donald Trump’s campaign and his supporters in public statements and lawsuits, the bulk of which have been rejected in court, debunked by election officials or have not been substantiated by hard evidence. Most of those who spoke said they participated as poll watchers or challengers at Detroit’s TCF Center, which in the days following the election became the main focus of Trump supporters concerned about irregularities.

As the hearing proceeded, The Associated Press published an interview with U.S. Attorney General William Barr, who said U.S. attorneys and FBI agents “have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”

Some of the speakers sought additional recourse from the legislature. Conservative Northern Michigan radio host Randy Bishop asked committee members to support a “full forensic audit” of election results in Wayne, Macomb, Oakland, Kent and Antrim counties prior to the electoral college vote.

“We won’t accept Biden and Harris as our president and vice president until we’re given proof that nothing was illegally done in this election,” he said. “Show us the facts. We want to see the ballots, we want to see the poll books, we want to see the cables, the tabulators. We want to see it all.”

Trump appeared to be following along for at least part of the testimony, sharing clips of the hearing from his Twitter account.

Aside from taking testimony and introducing policy changes for how future elections in Michigan are handled, the legislature’s ability to intervene in the current election process is limited. The legislature cannot file voter fraud charges or prosecute voter fraud claims, and when it comes to the presidential election, state law stipulates that the political party of the winning candidate picks its slate of electors.

Michigan’s 16 presidential electors are set to cast their votes for Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris next month.

Sen. Pete Lucido, R-Shelby Township, told one of the speakers Tuesday that lawmakers are ultimately policymakers, not judges.

“At the end of the day, this needs to go to the Attorney General’s office,” he said of voter fraud allegations.

On social media Tuesday, Attorney General Dana Nessel — who has called the Trump campaign’s challenges to the validity of the state’s election results in Michigan “baseless” — said her office and hundreds of other law enforcement agencies around the state can take and investigate reports of election fraud.

Michigan election officials have vouched for the integrity of the November election, and the Board of State Canvassers recently certified results showing President-elect Joe Biden earned 154,188 more votes than Trump.

The Trump campaign did not file a request for a recount of those certified results.

In the weeks since the election, Republicans have raised allegations of impropriety on a myriad of issues, including election software, unbalanced precincts where poll books don’t match the number of ballots cast, the amount of access poll challengers had during the ballot counting process and clerical errors caught in the aftermath of election night or during the canvassing process.

The first person to testify Tuesday was former state Sen. Patrick Colbeck, who suggested in a PowerPoint presentation that initial vote count disparities reported out of Antrim County meant software issues could’ve existed across the state. The county’s failure to properly update the voting software initially resulted in incorrect reports of unofficial results, but the canvassing process would have eventually caught the issue regardless, Antrim County Clerk Sheryl Guy previously told the committee.

Near the end of Colbeck’s testimony, Senate Oversight Committee Chair Sen. Ed McBroom, R-Vulcan, explained how a paper count of the Antrim County ballots didn’t show the same discrepancy as the software initially did.

“The tabulators that received the votes and printed up the tabulation sheet didn’t demonstrate the inaccuracy that the software analysis did for the unofficial vote count,” McBroom told Colbeck. “So when the Board of Canvassers would come together to certify the vote at a later time, they would have easily noticed the tabulation sheets were not in accord with the unofficial vote count that was announced by the clerk.”

When Colbeck responded that the error may have affected both tabulators and software, McBroom quickly shut him down, repeating that the tabulator count was indeed accurate.

The legislative investigation into the elections process started shortly after unofficial statewide totals showed Trump lost the state to Biden. McBroom and House Oversight Chair Matt Hall, R-Marshall, have said the intent of the investigation is to review what happened and look into future legislative changes to how the state conducts elections.

But legislative Democrats have criticized the premise, arguing the proceedings feed into unfounded theories that sow doubt in legitimate election results.

“We are learning nothing new,” Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich, D-Flint, said of Tuesday’s hearing. “We should not continue to provide people the platform to espouse harmful and wrong conspiracy theories about the way majority-Black communities conduct their elections.”

Previously, the committee authorized a subpoena to the Michigan Bureau of Elections for information and communications related to the 2020 primary and general elections. The bureau forked over 1,100 documents related to absentee voting efforts.

Tuesday’s hearing drew a large crowd both inside the committee room and outside the Senate Office Building, and many attendees were not wearing masks.

Ahead of the hearing, Ingham County Health Officer Linda Vail sent a letter to the Senate urging them to step up enforcement of COVID-19 protocols, noting her office had received complaints about a lack of mask wearing and social distancing during previous long committee meetings.

“This is particularly concerning because we know that legislators and members of the public who gather at these meetings travel from various corners of the state and risk bringing the virus back home to their communities,” she wrote. “Abiding by current health protocols in these situations is crucial, especially in this moment where we are experiencing a drastic spike in COVID-19 case numbers.”

Michigan lawmakers will hear additional testimony about claims of election irregularities this week from Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney. He’s set to testify in-person before the House Oversight Committee at 6 p.m. Wednesday.

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