Washington Township – Former President Donald Trump revived unproven allegations of a “stolen” and “rigged” November 2020 election in Michigan on Saturday night, despite a series of audits, court rulings and a Senate report confirming the victory for President Joe Biden.

During a nearly two-hour speech, Trump periodically peppered the audience with brief but sweeping accusations of widespread voter fraud in Michigan, particularly in Detroit.

The former president used the 2020 demands to stress the importance of getting pro-Republican voters to vote in November’s midterm elections in enough numbers that ‘the radical left can’t rig or steal it’ .

But even as Trump talked about the upcoming election, he kept glancing back.

“We have to get to the bottom of what happened in 2020,” he said at one point.

Certified results showed Biden beating Trump 51% 48% or by more than 154,000 votes — a bigger victory than the Republican’s 2016 victory of 10,704 votes over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

The following is an overview of often-repeated claims and what the evidence has shown.

Claim 1: Widespread fraud rocked the Michigan election

“What happened in Michigan was a disgrace,” Trump said Saturday night of the 2020 election.

Any claim that there would be enough fraud in the November 3, 2020 election to swing the presidential race in Michigan is dubious due to the sheer volume of votes it would take.

Biden’s margin of victory of 154,000 votes was more than 14 times the 10,704 votes the then-Republican president won in Michigan in 2016. Biden’s margin in Michigan alone is also greater than the margin by which Trump won Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin combined in 2016.

Michigan also has election procedures in place to prevent widespread fraud, including bipartisan canvassing commissions that review and confirm results in each county.

The canvassing process — in which every record produced during the ballot counting process is scrutinized and compared in a public setting — is one of Michigan’s most “underrated” security measures, the clerk said. of Kent County, Lisa Posthumus Lyons, a Republican, to the Detroit News. in 2020.

Additionally, the state uses paper ballots that can be used as a backup if there is an electronic tally issue.

A manual audit or recount of every ballot has taken place in the Republican stronghold of County Antrim, where counts for Nov. 3, 2020, came into question after Biden came out on top in preliminary results, but Trump easily prevailed when county election officials discovered human error and corrected tabulations.

Continued: How Mistakes in Rural Michigan County Led to Big Election Misinformation

During the audit, the Michigan State Department found that Trump gained 12 votes – he got 11 votes, while Biden lost one vote.

“That’s very typical of what we find in a manual ballot count,” said Lori Bourbonais of the Michigan State Department.

Continued: County Antrim audit shows Trump up 12 votes

Michigan has a decentralized electoral system that allows more than 1,500 city or township clerks to manage their own elections, a process that Posthumus Lyons said “lends itself to better security.”

Trump won Kent County by 3 percentage points in 2016. But Biden won it by 6 points in 2020.

Claim 2: Detroit fraud helped tip the race for Biden

The former president’s claims have focused heavily on Detroit, Michigan’s largest city.

Trump said Saturday night that the TCF Center, where Detroit’s mail-in ballots were counted in November 2020, was the site of “major irregularities” and “a lot of fraud.”

But Detroit’s turnout was only up 2,000 votes from 2016. On the Thursday before Election Day, Detroit Clerk Janice Winfrey predicted turnout would only rise to 50%, compared to 48.6% in 2016.

“But that’s not enough, Detroit,” the Democratic clerk said at a press conference ahead of the Nov. 3, 2020, election. The city’s turnout ended at 49.6%.

Additionally, Trump has performed better in Detroit in 2020 than he did four years earlier. His percentage of votes rose from 3% to 5% in the Democratic stronghold, and the former president garnered nearly 5,000 more votes than in 2016, according to official city results. Biden received nearly 1,000 fewer votes than Hillary Clinton in 2016.

The Wayne County Board of Solicitors certified the results after the mail-in ballots of 70% of Detroit’s 134 absentee count boards were found to be unbalanced without explanation. Disagreements ranged from one to more than four votes.

Jonathan Brater, Michigan’s Chief Electoral Officer, said in an affidavit that the difference between tabulated mail ballots and names on the ballot books in Detroit was 150. There were “fewer tabulated ballots than names in the poll books,” Brater added.

“If the ballots had been counted illegally, there would be far more, not a little less, tallied ballots than there are names on the ballot books,” he said.

Wayne County Council along with different canvassers certified the results of the August 2020 and November 2016 elections in Detroit when there were similar or worse imbalances.

Under then-Secretary of State Ruth Johnson, a Republican, the Michigan Bureau of Elections audited 2016 results in Detroit and found “no evidence of widespread voter fraud” that led to imbalances in city precincts and absentee count boards.

Continued: Wayne Co. canvassers certify election results after initial standoff

During a House Oversight Committee hearing after the 2020 election, Mellissa Carone claimed she had witnessed thousands of instances of ballots going through tabulators multiple times in Detroit. Carone was an information technology contractor for Dominion Voting System at the TCF Center when the city’s mail-in ballots were counted.

But the advice for counting absentees was not distorted by thousands of votes.

Election officials said Carone did not understand what she was seeing.

“If 100,000 ballots instead of 16,000 had been delivered, Detroit’s total turnout would be 84,000 more ballots than is publicly announced,” according to a Detroit City Court filing.

Continued: Judge denies Wayne County audit request, stop voter certification

A Wayne County judge previously said Carone “made numerous patently false allegations” and called his claims “not credible” in a November ruling. “What Ms. Carone believes she saw would be captured by the Detroit Elections Department and County Canvassing Board during the canvassing that takes place after each election as a matter of law,” Judge Timothy Kenny said in his statement. decision.

Allegation 3: Mail-in or mail-in ballots are ‘corrupted’

On Saturday night, Trump said at one point that “When you hear an absentee ballot, it means a corrupt election.”

Absentee ballots have long been used in elections in Michigan and across the country. But the move to provide universal access to mail-in voting in Michigan has drawn Republican opposition.

Trump voted in person in New York in 2016, and he voted in a Florida precinct during the state’s early voting period for the November 2020 election.

But the former president used mail-in ballots to vote during his presidency, something his Democratic critics note.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Democrats in Michigan urged supporters to vote by mail to ensure their votes were cast. Following Trump’s advice, Republican supporters were more likely to vote in person.

The former president’s message on mail-in voting has taken a leap forward.

In September 2020, Trump flip-flopped and caught on Twitter to encourage Michigan voters to request mail-in ballots and vote early.

“Attention MICHIGAN! Early voting has begun AND mail-in ballots are being mailed out. Enjoy the early and absentee voting schedule,” he wrote in a tweet that included a link to Michigan Vote State Information Center.

It was a change from May 2020, when he threatened to withhold funding for Michigan after Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson mailed mail-in ballot requests to all 7.7 million residents. Qualified Michigan Voters.

“Absentee ballots are very dangerous,” Trump said at the time, without providing evidence. “There is enormous fraud involved and enormous illegality.”

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