A Michigan Republican spent eight months searching for evidence of election fraud, but all he found was lies. Michigan—Right around the time Donald Trump was flexing his conspiratorial muscles on Saturday night, recycling old ruses and inventing new boogeymen in his first public speech since inciting a siege of the U.S. Capitol in January, a dairy farmer in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula sat down to supper. It had been a trying day. The farmer, Ed McBroom, battled sidewinding rain while working his 320 acres, loading feed and breeding livestock and at one point delivering a distressed calf backwards from its mother’s womb, before hanging the newborn animal by its hind legs for respiratory drainage. Now, having slipped off his manure-caked rubber boots, McBroom groaned as he leaned into his home-grown meal of unpasteurized milk and spaghetti with hamburger sauce. He would dine peacefully at his banquet-length antique table, surrounded by his family of 15, unaware that in nearby Ohio, the former president was accusing him—thankfully, this time not by name—of covering up the greatest crime in American history. A few days earlier, McBroom, a Republican state senator who chairs the Oversight Committee, had released a report detailing his eight-month-long investigation into the legitimacy of the 2020 election. The stakes could hardly have been higher. Against a backdrop of confusion and suspicion and frightening civic friction—with Trump claiming he’d been cheated out of victory, and anecdotes about fraud coursing through every corner of the state—McBroom had led an exhaustive probe of Michigan’s electoral integrity. His committee interviewed scores of witnesses, subpoenaed and reviewed thousands of pages of documents, dissected the procedural mechanics of Michigan’s highly decentralized elections system, and scrutinized the most trafficked claims about corruption at the state’s ballot box in November. McBroom’s conclusion hit Lansing like a meteor: It was all a bunch of nonsense. “Our clear finding is that citizens should be confident the results represent the true results of the ballots cast by the people of Michigan,” McBroom wrote in the report. “There is no evidence presented at this time to prove either significant acts of fraud or that an organized, wide-scale effort to commit fraudulent activity was perpetrated in order to subvert the will of Michigan voters.” For good measure, McBroom added: “The Committee strongly recommends citizens use a critical eye and ear toward those who have pushed demonstrably false theories for their own personal gain.” This reflected a pattern throughout the report—a clear and clinical statement of facts, accompanied by more animated language that expressed disgust with the grifters selling deception to the masses and disappointment with the voters who were buying it. Sitting at his dinner table, I told the senator that his writing occasionally took a tone of anger. He smirked. “I don’t know that I ever wrote angry,” McBroom replied. “But I tried to leave no room for doubt.” So much for that. Soon after the report was released, Trump issued a thundering statement calling McBroom’s investigation “a cover up, and a method of getting out of a Forensic Audit for the examination of the Presidential contest.” The former president then published the office phone numbers for McBroom and Michigan’s GOP Senate majority leader, Mike Shirkey, urging his followers to “call those two Senators now and get them to do the right thing, or vote them the hell out of office!” David A. Graham: Republicans’ phony argument for election audits McBroom had grown up a “history nerd.” He idolized the revolutionary Founders. He inhaled biographies of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt. He revered the institution of the American presidency. And here was the 45th president, calling him out by name, accusing him of unthinkable treachery. “Surreal,” McBroom said quietly. He leaned back, running his hands through a mess of sweaty blond hair. Then he folded his thick arms, which bulged from a red cutoff button-up shirt, staring heavenward in search of the words. Some 30 seconds went by. “Just … surreal.” Perhaps trying to cheer himself, McBroom told me he doubted whether Trump had personally written that statement. He doubted even more whether Trump had actually read the report. (If he had, Trump would understand why an Arizona-style “forensic audit” would be pointless.) But this was cold comfort. In many ways, Trump was a stand-in for the constituents McBroom knew who insisted that the election was stolen, who raged against the scheming Democrats and the spineless Republicans, who believed that America was succumbing to an illegitimate leftist takeover. Most of them, McBroom realized, would not read the report, either. And he wasn’t sure what more he was supposed to do for them. “I can’t make people believe me,” McBroom said, an air of exasperation in his voice. “All I can hope is that people use their discernment and judgment, to look at the facts I’ve laid out for them, and then look at these theories out there, and ask the question: Does any of this make sense?” McBroom admitted to being a bit discouraged. It’s hard enough for an elected official to convince the public of something it doesn’t want to accept. Yet here he was, a lowly state lawmaker from the pastures of Dickinson County, struggling to win the hearts and minds of Trump voters while engaged in a zero-sum showdown with Trump himself. “All politicians lie. That’s what people believe, right?” McBroom said. “Well, somebody is lying. It’s either me or—” He stopped himself. “Somebody else.” More At https://www.theatlantic.com/politic...wzjR48n8j4Y1NYp9IMm7vvO0LPGFoYOZD9HeD7Ds7wRIg
GOP candidates deemed ineligible as massive signature fraud scandal upends Michigan gubernatorial race The state Bureau of Elections has recommended that five of the 10 Republican candidates hoping to oust Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer should be kicked off the ballot prior to the Aug. 2 primary due to tens of thousands of forged signatures. In total, elections staff identified 36 individual petition circulators who submitted fraudulent petition sheets with invalid signatures in at least 10 petition drives — submitting at least 68,000 invalid signatures total. Those petition drives included those for governor, circuit judge and district judge. Staff are working to refer incidents of apparent fraud to law enforcement for criminal investigation. This comes after many Republicans — including many in the GOP gubernatorial field — have questioned whether former President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, despite President Joe Biden winning by more than 154,000 votes in Michigan. Many have spread conspiracy theories about unproven election fraud. The bureau’s unprecedented report Monday night has already prompted at least one candidate, Michigan State Police Capt. Michael Brown, to formally withdraw from the race. “It appears that after my campaign’s signature gathering was complete, individuals independently contracted for a portion of our signature gathering and validation jumped onto other campaigns and went on a money grab,” Brown said in a statement Tuesday morning, after his campaign manager initially contested the report the night before. “I cannot and will not be associated with this activity. … I will exit the race for Michigan’s Governor with my integrity and this principle intact,” Brown said.
Finally they are pushing charges against the "voting fraud" clowns in Michigan Charges recommended for QAnon-promoting Michigan official for voting system breaches: report https://www.rawstory.com/michigan-qanon-stephanie-scott/ Authorities in Michigan urged criminal charges for a local township official over two voting system breaches, Reuters reported Tuesday citing "previously unreported records" obtained through a public records request. "A state police detective recommended that the Michigan attorney general consider unspecified charges amid a months-long probe into one breach related to the Republican clerk’s handling of a vote tabulator, according to a June email from the detective to state and local officials," Reuters reported. "The clerk, Stephanie Scott, oversaw voting in rural Adams Township until the state last year revoked her authority over elections. Scott has publicly embraced baseless claims that the 2020 election was rigged against former U.S. President Donald Trump and has posted online about the QAnon conspiracy theory." Scott, who denies any wrongdoing, reportedly also gave confidential data to Benjamin Cotton. Cotton has also been subpoenaed in Georgia over a voting system breach in Coffee County. "Scott’s actions are part of a national effort by public officials and others seeking evidence of Trump's false stolen-election claims," notes Reuters. "The allegations against Scott have parallels to the high-profile case of Tina Peters, the clerk in Mesa County, Colorado, who enjoys cult-hero status in the election-conspiracy movement and faces felony charges related to similar voting-system breachesScott’s case illustrates what some election-security experts describe as a growing insider threat from officials tasked with safeguarding American democracy." Scott accused the Michigan Bureau of Elections of "tyranny" after it stripped her of authority to oversee elections. Read the full report.
The election executive arrested for theft has nothing to do with voting machines. His tiny company was involved in scheduling software for poll workers for their work timeslots, training, payroll, etc. His tiny company used a cloud vendor in China and he stored the backups in his home which included personal data of the poll workers (hence the identity theft charges). The moral of this story is don't use the low cost vendor... and track a vendor's claims about where their cloud storage is. For anything government related -- require your vendor to use the Amazon government cloud which is approved for government security standards and the cloud servers are located in the U.S. Election Software CEO Arrested on Data Theft Charges https://www.thedailybeast.com/election-software-konnech-ceo-eugene-yu-arrested-on-data-theft-charges The CEO of a software company often discussed by election deniers was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of stealing data on hundreds of poll workers in Los Angeles County. Eugene Yu, the founder and top executive of Konnech, was detained in Michigan over the alleged theft of personal identifying information, while investigators also seized hard drives and other “digital evidence.” In 2020, Konnech won a five-year contract with LA County for software designed to track election workers’ schedules, payroll, training, and communications, county clerk Dean C. Logan said. Election deniers have repeatedly accused Konnech of storing the sensitive data on servers in China, which the company has repeatedly denied. But the office of Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón says its investigators did find data stored in China. Officials didn’t specify what information was taken, but said it didn’t alter election results. Read it at Associated Press
Lock them up! Michigan attorney general re-opens criminal probe into fake electors for Trump https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/poli...-general-dana-nessel-investigation/index.html
Look which state party is broke -- on news that major donors don't provide funds to a GOP entity which continually pushes election fraud nonsense, supports insurrection and peddles QAnon talking points. Basically broke, Michigan GOP to charge delegates to attend convention https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-g...chigan-gop-charge-delegates-attend-convention "It's the latest sign of financial strain for the Michigan GOP, which last year struggled to raise money from traditional donors after grassroots delegates stormed state conventions to nominate outsider candidates loyal to former President Donald Trump."