LANSING, Michigan, June 6 (Reuters) – Michigan state police have obtained orders to confiscate voting equipment and election records in at least three cities and a county in the past six weeks, police records show, expanding the largest investigation known for unauthorized attempts by former President Donald Trump’s allies to gain access to voting systems.
Unreported records include search warrants and researcher notes obtained by Reuters through public records requests. The documents reveal a series of efforts by state authorities to secure voting machines, election books, data storage devices and telephone records as evidence in an investigation launched in mid-February.
The state investigation follows violations of local electoral systems in Michigan by Republican officials and pro-Trump activists trying to prove their baseless allegations of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
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Police documents reveal, among other things, that the state is investigating a possible breach of voting equipment in Lake Township, a small, largely conservative community in Missaukee County, northern Michigan. The previously unreported case 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 the voting equipment.
Many of the infractions have been inspired in part by the false claim that state-ordered voting system upgrades or maintenance would wipe out evidence of alleged election fraud in 2020. State election officials, including those in Michigan, say these processes have no impact on the preservation of past election data.
Search warrants also allowed state police to confiscate the election equipment in Irving Township in Barry County and have it examined. Local officials publicly acknowledged last month that state police raided the town office on April 29, a day after the order was issued.
In addition, records shed new light on election team infractions in Roscommon County. An official from Richfield County County told investigators that he gave two vote-counting tabs to an unauthorized and unidentified “third party,” who held them for several weeks in early 2021. The county secretary acknowledged that she also handed over her equipment. to unauthorized persons.
Taken together, these documents show a statewide push by pro-Trump activists to gain access to the electoral machinery in search of evidence for disproved theories that the team was manipulated into a crucial state that vote for Trump in 2016 and Democrat Joe Biden in 2020.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson told Reuters that the state is investigating whether electoral system violations are coordinated.
“If there is coordination, either between those in our state or reaching a national level, we can determine that and then we can look for the responsibility of everyone involved,” Benson, a Democrat, said in an interview.
On Feb. 10, Benson announced that he had asked Michigan Attorney General Democrat Dana Nessel to begin a criminal investigation, citing information the state authorities had received about unauthorized access to voting machines and data. in Roscommon County. In separate consultations, local or state law enforcement officials have investigated security breaches related to voting equipment in Cross Village Township, Emmet County, and Adams Township, Hillsdale County. last year.
Representatives of the state police and the Attorney General’s Office declined to comment on the investigation.
Trump won all counties where there have been allegations of violations or attempted breaches in Michigan. The results in these jurisdictions were confirmed by multiple audits and a Republican-controlled state Senate investigation, which found no evidence of widespread fraud. But some activists and officials pushing conspiracy theories of election fraud claim that Trump’s margin should have been greater in these areas, and his efforts are affecting communities across the state.
In rural Barry County, Republican Sheriff Dar Leaf has teamed up with proponents of a denied claim that voting machines were rigged against Trump. Leaf is continuing her own investigation, although last year the Republican prosecution urged her to suspend her for lack of evidence. Trump won the county by a 2-1 margin.
In recent weeks, the Leaf office has sent large requests for public records to county and municipal secretaries in the county, seeking a series of election-related records. The requests were condemned by local employees and officials in Reuters interviews and public statements as unfounded and onerous. An editorial in the local newspaper, The Hastings Banner, described Leaf’s investigation as “a waste of time and an offense 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 were being manipulated to favor Biden and “we need to know if this happened in Barry County.”
“INADEQUATE ACCESS”
Reuters records show that in Lake Township, a community of about 2,800 people in Missaukee County, state police obtained an order on April 22 to search the secretariat’s office for evidence. violations of the electoral law.
City Secretary Korrinda Winkelmann, an elected Republican who oversees local voting, declined to comment.
Missaukee County, where Trump won 2020 with 76% of the vote, is home to Daire Rendon, a Republican state lawmaker who has accepted the false claim that widespread fraud robbed Trump of victory in 2020. Rendon he approached several employees in his district, which includes Missaukee, Roscommon and other counties, asking them to give access to their voting equipment to people seeking evidence of fraud, Reuters previously reported.
In December 2020, Rendon was one of two Republican members in the Michigan House of Representatives who joined an unsuccessful federal lawsuit seeking to overturn Biden’s victory in five battle states.
Rendon did not respond to requests for comment. In a May 25 interview with Cadillac News, a local newspaper, he acknowledged that he had contacted employees, but said he “never touched a voting machine” and did nothing wrong.
State police are also stepping up their investigation into alleged offenses in Roscommon County. In February, Secretary of State Benson said unauthorized persons “obtained inadequate access to the tabulation machines and data units” used in the county and in one of its counties, Richfield. Benson, however, did not name any suspects or provide other details.
State police records show that investigators are investigating allegations that the Richfield township supervisor allowed a “third party” to take possession of the city’s two ballot tabs for several weeks in early 2021. Records they identify the supervisor only by title, not by name. but the county has only one person in office, Republican John Bawol.
The records detail an interview with a “suspect.” The name and title are worded, but the suspect is described as an elected official of the municipality. The official told investigators he believed the tabs were taken to “northern Detroit suburbs” in early February by an unidentified group of people driving a small SUV. The tabs did not return until March, the official added. The officer said that at one point he registered with a woman, whose name is written, about when the machines would return, and “said they were almost done.”
State police found that the two security seals on a machine indicated that it had been tampered with, according to records. The stamps were intact on the other machine.
Greg Watt, the town clerk, whose job includes protecting the election team, told investigators he did not know the identity of the third party who accessed the voting machines, according to records. Police documents identify Watt by his name and name him as a witness in the case.
Watt and Bawol did not respond to requests for comment.
Non-compliance is costing taxpayers money. Richfield City Council voted May 25 to buy two new ballot papers and three memory devices at a cost of $ 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 have also tried to interrogate the Roscommon County Secretary in connection with an alleged breach of the voting system, according to police records. The county secretary, whose name is written on the documents, is Michelle Stevenson, a Republican.
In February, the county secretary recognized a state election official who had provided a data storage unit containing election information “for one or both” of Richfield Township’s ballot papers to an unidentified third party, according to an email from the officer to the police. in which the name of the secretary has also been written. He also gave the person access to one of Roscommon County’s voting tabulation machines, according to the email.
When state investigators tried to interview the county secretary on Feb. 17, she said she was willing to talk to police, but declined to discuss the matter at the time, according to police records.
Two weeks later, on March 2, investigators executed a search warrant at Stevenson’s office, accompanied by representatives of Election Systems & Software LLC, the Nebraska-based voting machine manufacturer that uses in Roscommon County, according to records.
Stevenson declined to comment. Election Systems & Software did not respond to requests for comment.
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Report by Nathan Layne and Peter Eisler; edited by Jason Szep and Brian Thevenot
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