State of Michigan preparing to intervene in Antrim County lawsuit alleging voter fraud
LANSING — The state of Michigan is preparing to intervene in a lawsuit alleging fraud in Antrim County as the small GOP stronghold in northern Michigan is emerging as a last hope for allies of President Donald Trump seeking to cast doubts on the outcome of the Nov. 3 presidential election.
As chief election officer, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is concerned about allegations in the lawsuit that the county’s election results were “somehow influenced by fraud or the purported rigging of the … tabulators,” Assistant Attorney General Heather Meingast said in a Tuesday email to an attorney pursuing the lawsuit. Benson “is considering intervening in this case as a party defendant.”
Well-publicized errors in the unofficial election results Antrim County sent to the state of Michigan on election night made it appear that Democrat Joe Biden received more votes than Trump, when in fact Trump had won the county by nearly 4,000 votes.
The errors were corrected and Antrim County Clerk Sheryl Guy, a Republican, took responsibility, According to a court filing, Guy made an error Oct. 23 when she updated ballot information to include a Mancelona Township candidate who had been inadvertently omitted from the ballot.
Instead of updating the ballot information for all precincts, Guy only updated the ballot information in Mancelona Township. The resulting mismatch in the ballot information for various county precincts caused some results to be transposed when the unofficial results were posted, but the results for each precinct, preserved both in the form of paper ballots and print-outs from each tabulator, were accurate, the county said in a Dec. 1 court filing.
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State and county officials say it was a case of human error and Antrim’s Dominion Voting Systems tabulators and associated software operated as it should.
But Trump’s attorneys have seized on the case to allege problems with the tabulators, which are used in Antrim and in most Michigan counties and in many states around the nation.
William Bailey, a resident of Central Lake Township in Antrim County, alleges that when votes for that township were retabulated Nov. 6, during efforts to correct the errors in the unofficial results, three ballots were damaged and not recounted, resulting in a proposal to allow a marijuana dispensary in the township receiving approval, after initially resulting in a tie vote.
Based largely on that development, 13th Circuit Court Judge Keven Elsenheimer on Friday ordered “forensic imaging” of 22 Dominion tabulators and related software the county used in the election.
That imaging took place Sunday morning and was conducted by a team from Allied Security Operations Group, a cybersecurity firm whose representatives have put forward inaccurate and flawed testimony and analyses in support of lawsuits brought by the Trump campaign and its allies.
On Sunday morning, Trump attorney Jenna Ellis told Fox News that “our team” was conducting the examination of the machines in Antrim County. The results should “tell us a lot” about the election equipment, Ellis said.
Matthew DePerno, Bailey’s Portage attorney, told the Steve Gruber Show Monday that he is not working for the Trump campaign, but he is “happy to cooperate” with the campaign.
DePerno, who has not returned phone calls from the Free Press, said Monday he did not yet know the results of the examination, but the team from ASOG “were happy” about the results and “seemed excited.”
In authorizing the inspection of the tabulators, Elsenheimer issued a protective order “restricting use, distribution or manipulation of the forensic images and/or other information gleaned” without first getting his approval. The judge included the protective order after county attorneys told him the examination of the tabulators would violate their licensing agreement with Dominion, which is not a party to the case and has not responded to questions from the Free Press.
In her email to DePerno, Meingast asked if he would go along with a motion for Benson to intervene in the case. Among Benson’s concerns is that the judge’s protective order may not be comprehensive enough, she said.
More:Antrim vote glitch: Expert shares how county mistakenly flipped from red to blue
“Please let me know as soon as you can, as we hope to file as soon as possible,” Meingast said.
On Tuesday night, Benson spokesman Jake Rollow issued a news release warning the public to be prepared for an elevated Antrim “misinformation campaign” resulting from the inspection of the tabulators.
“The Michigan Department of State warns voters to be wary of the claims that the group may make in coming days,” Rollow said. “Members of the group have previously made false statements, shared fake documents and made baseless claims about the election that have been widely debunked and rejected in multiple courts.”
Anyone concerned about the election results in Antrim County could have requested an official recount, but nobody did, Rollow said.
Documents filed in Bailey’s Antrim County lawsuit show that even before Elsenheimer issued his order, Bailey’s legal team and ASOG were granted some access to voting equipment and/or information in three Antrim townships — Central Lake, Mancelona, and Star — with the consent of township clerks or superviso, on Nov. 27, the Friday after Thanksgiving.
DePerno said in a Dec. 2 court filing they found “astonishing” discrepancies that call the election result and the integrity of the tabulators into doubt.
The county said in a court filing Bailey’s case is based on “mere conjecture and speculation,” and his team can not show an injury, since the county’s official results show Trump as the winner there.
Biden won Michigan by more than 150,000 votes and won the election nationally with 306 electoral votes to 202 for Trump.
Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @paulegan4. Read more on Michigan politics and sign up for our elections newsletter.
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