Michigan is widening the largest known investigation into unauthorized attempts by allies of former President Donald Trump to access voting systems.
Over the past six weeks, Michigan state police have obtained warrants to seize voting equipment and election records for at least three towns and one county.
The newly reported records reveal a flurry of efforts made by state authorities to secure voting machines, poll books, data-storage devices, and phone records as evidence.
Michigan launched ints investigation after breaches were made in local election systems by Republican officials and pro-Trump supporters trying to prove his completely baseless claim that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election, which Trump unequivocally lost.
The police documents show that Michigan state is investigating a potential breach in voting equipment, which was previously unreported. One of the new incidents under inspection is in Lake Township is a small and largely conservative town in the north of the state, in Missaukee County.
There were at least 17 incidents nationwide in which Trump supporters gained or attempted to gain access without authorization to voting equipment.
Eleven of those were in Michigan alone.
Many of the breaches were inspired in part by disinformation. There was a false assertion that state-ordered voting system upgrades or maintenance would somehow erase evidence of alleged voting fraud in 2020. In reality, these typical processes have no impact on the preservation of data.
In Michigan, state police seized election equipment in Barry County’s Irving Township and examined it. Records shed new light as well on election equipment breaches in Roscommon County. In one town, Richfield Township, an official told investigators that he gave two vote-counting tabulators to an unauthorized and unidentified “third party” who held onto them for several weeks in 2021. The county’s clerk also handed equipment over to unauthorized people.
The documents show a statewide push by pro-Trump supporters to access election machinery in search of evidence for debunked theories that the election was rigged.
Be the first to comment