LANCING, Michigan, June 6 (Reuters) – Michigan State Police have received orders to seize voting equipment and election-related records in at least three cities and one county in the past six weeks, police records show, expanding the largest known investigation into unauthorized attempts by allies of former President Donald Trump to access voting systems.
Undeclared records so far include search warrants and notes from investigators obtained by Reuters through requests for public documents. The documents reveal a wave of government efforts to provide voting machines, voting books, storage devices and telephone records as evidence in an investigation launched in mid-February.
The state’s investigation follows violations of Michigan’s local election system by Republican officials and pro-Trump activists who are trying to prove his baseless allegations of widespread election fraud in the 2020 election.
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Police documents reveal, among other things, that the state is investigating a potential breach of voting equipment in Lake Township, a small, largely conservative community in Misoki County in northern Michigan. The case, which has not been reported before, is one of at least 17 incidents across the country, including 11 in Michigan, in which Trump supporters obtained or attempted to gain unauthorized access to voting equipment.
Many of the violations are inspired in part by the false claim that state-ordered upgrades or maintenance of the voting system will erase evidence of alleged vote fraud in 2020. U.S. election officials, including those in Michigan, say the process has no effect. on preserving data from past elections.
The search warrants also authorized state police to seize and inspect election equipment in the town of Irving in the county of Bari. Local authorities publicly admitted last month that state police raided the city office on April 29th, a day after the order was issued.
In addition, the recordings shed new light on violations of election equipment in Roscommon County. An official in Richfield County told investigators that he had given two tabulation counters to an unauthorized and unidentified “third party” who held them for several weeks in early 2021. The county official admitted that she was also handed over her equipment to unauthorized people.
Taken together, these documents depict a state drive by pro-Trump activists to access the election machine in search of evidence for refuted theories that the equipment was set in a crucially volatile state, voting for Trump in 2016 and Democrat Joe Biden in 2020
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson told Reuters that the state was investigating whether violations of the electoral system were coordinated.
“If there is coordination, whether it’s between our state or national, we can determine that, and then we can hold everyone accountable,” Benson, a Democrat, said in an interview.
On February 10, Benson announced that she had asked Michigan’s attorney general, Democrat Dana Nessel, to launch a criminal investigation, citing information obtained by state authorities about unauthorized access to voting machines and data in Roscommon County. In separate investigations, state or local law enforcement officials investigated security breaches involving voting equipment in the village of Cross Village in Emmett County and the city of Adams in Hillsdale County last year.
Representatives of the state police and the chief prosecutor’s office declined to comment on the investigations detailed in this story.
Trump has won all the counties in which breakthroughs or attempted breakthroughs in Michigan are suspected. The results in these jurisdictions were confirmed by numerous audits and investigations by the Republican-controlled US Senate, which found no evidence of widespread fraud. But some activists and officials who are promoting conspiracy theories about election fraud have argued that Trump’s margin should have been higher in those areas, and that their efforts are disturbing communities across the state.
In the rural district of Bari, Republican Sheriff Dar Leaf united with supporters of the refuted claim that the voting machines were set against Trump. Leaf is conducting his own investigation, although he was called by the Republican District Attorney last year to stop him for lack of evidence. Trump won the county 2-1.
In recent weeks, Leaf’s office has sent extensive requests for public records to county and city officials looking for a set of election-related records. The demands were condemned by officials and local officials in interviews and public statements by Reuters as unfounded and burdensome. An editorial in the local newspaper The Hastings Banner called Leaf’s investigation a “waste of time and an insult to our citizens.”
Leaf did not respond to requests for comment. In an interview with Reuters in February, he defended his investigation. He said he was “concerned” by theories that voting machines across the country had been set up in Biden’s favor and “we need to know if this happened in Bari County”.
“INCORRECT ACCESS”
Reuters records show that in Lake Township, a community of about 2,800 people in Misoki County, state police received an order on April 22 to search the official’s office for evidence of potential violations of the election law.
Corinda Winkelmann, an elected Republican who oversees the local vote, declined to comment.
Missoki County, where Trump won 76 percent of the vote in 2020, is home to Deir Randon, a Republican lawmaker who has accepted the false claim that widespread fraud has robbed Trump of victory in 2020. Rendon has turned to a number of officials in her area, including Misoki, Roscommon and other counties, asking them to give people seeking evidence of fraud access to their voting equipment, Reuters reported earlier.
In December 2020, Randon was one of two Republicans in the Michigan House of Representatives who joined a failed federal lawsuit aimed at overturning Biden’s victory in five combat states.
Randon did not respond to requests for comment. In an interview with Cadillac News, a local newspaper, on May 25, she admitted that she had contacted officials, but said she had “never touched a voting machine” and had done nothing wrong.
State police are also stepping up investigations into alleged violations in Roscommon County. In February, Secretary of State Benson said unauthorized people “gained inadequate access to tabs and data devices” used in the county and in one of his towns, Richfield. However, Benson did not name the suspects or provide other details.
State police files show that investigators are investigating allegations that the Richfield city warden allowed a “third party” to take over the city’s two tabs in a few weeks in early 2021. The records identify the warden only by title, not name. but the county has only one person in that position, Republican John Bavol.
The recordings describe in detail an interview with a “suspect”. The name and title have been edited, but the suspect has been described as an elected municipal official. The official told investigators he believed the tabs had been taken to the “northern suburbs of Detroit” in early February by an unidentified group of people driving a small SUV. The tabs were not returned until March, the official added. The officer said at one point that he had contacted a woman whose name had been edited about when the machines would be returned, and “she advised that they were almost ready.”
State police found that both security seals on one machine showed it had been tampered with, records show. The seals were intact on the other machine.
Greg Watt, a municipal official whose job involves protecting election equipment, told investigators he did not know the identity of the third party who had access to the voting machines, according to records. Police documents identified Watt by name and called him as a witness in the case.
Watt and Bawol did not respond to requests for comment.
Violations cost taxpayers money. The Richfield City Council voted on May 25 to buy two new voting tabs and three memory devices for $ 8,763. The move was needed to “ensure the integrity of the election,” Watt told a board meeting, according to an audio recording reviewed by Reuters.
State police also tried to question a Roscommon County official over a separate alleged violation of the voting system, police said. The district official whose name is edited in the documents is Michelle Stevenson, a Republican.
In February, a county official admitted to a U.S. election official that she had provided a storage device containing information about the election “for one or both” from tablature votes in Richfield Township to an unidentified third party, according to an email from the official to the police, in which the name of the official was also edited. According to the email, she also gave the person access to one of Roscomen County’s counting machines.
When state investigators tried to interview the district official on February 17, she expressed a desire to talk to police but refused to discuss the matter at the time, police records show.
Two weeks later, on March 2, investigators carried out a search warrant for Stevenson’s office, accompanied by representatives of Election Systems & Software LLC, a Nebraska-based manufacturer of voting machines used in Roscommon County, the records show.
Stevenson declined to comment. Election Systems & Software did not respond to requests for comment.
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Report by Nathan Lane and Peter Eisler; edited by Jason Shep and Brian Tevenot
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