Michigan Election Official: Delaying Certification And Performing an Audit 'Makes Sense'
Amid unprecedented chaos and accusations of widespread irregularities in Detroit’s conduct of the presidential election, one Republican member of Michigan’s Board of State Canvassers said getting to the bottom of the accusations should take precedence over any arbitrary timetable.
With the board scheduled to vote Monday on results that, at this point, would give the state to Democrat Joe Biden, Republican board member Norman Shinkle said Thursday he thinks a delay might be in order, according to The Washington Post.
The results from Wayne County, which includes Detroit, were officially certified Tuesday, but after the vote, the two Republican members of the county’s board said they wanted to rescind their votes because they were pressured into accepting the results despite widespread concerns over totals that did not add up.
They said they were told the state would audit the results, only to have state officials say they would do no such thing. They also said they had been subjected to abuse and threats.
Michigan officials have also said that because there is no procedural vehicle to deal with the after-the-fact concerns, the state’s results should be certified.
But Shinkle said too many issues have been raised to simply plow ahead.
“I do think with all of the potential problems, if any of them are true, an audit is appropriate,” he said. “I take one step at a time, and if we can get more information, why not?”
Shinkle said the state needs to fully explore allegations that machines made by Dominion Voting Systems deleted votes for President Donald Trump. Trump’s opponents have derided the claims.
“If Dominion was fudging votes, that’s a serious problem,” he said. “If it’s true. I don’t know. I have to be convinced of it. That’s why the audit makes sense.”
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Shinkle said he is duty-bound to do more than sign off on the numbers.
“Right now the idea to check into some of these accusations seem to make sense to me,” he said. “We have to have people trust our system going forward.”
Shinkle’s wife, Mary, filed an affidavit supporting one of the lawsuits the Trump campaign has filed contesting the results. He said his position on the results has no connection to the lawsuit, according to The Post.
“That’s almost an accusation against marriage,” he said. “My wife can do whatever she wants to do.”
According to Shinkle, the extent of issues with the election is vast.
“Every time someone calls, they tell me about a new problem,” he said.
Shinkle said that “the odds are probably that [Biden] will become president.”
“But I don’t know what’s going to happen in Pennsylvania or Nevada. My job is to try to do the right thing for the vote in Michigan,” he said.
Democratic Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said Thursday her agency will conduct a post-election performance audit in Wayne County along with what she called a risk-limiting audit of paper ballots, according to the Detroit Free Press.
However, that is not to be confused with the audit the GOP is seeking.
Benson said her audits will sample results for clerical errors and “are neither designed to address nor performed in response to false or mythical allegations of ‘irregularities’ that have no basis in fact.”
The Democrat earlier heaped scorn on the Republican commissioners from Wayne County who rescinded their certification of the vote there.
“Essentially you saw two individuals on the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, who have a ministerial responsibility to certify the county canvass of election results, refusing to do so on baseless claims, and that were ultimately clerical errors that occurred in nearly every election in nearly every jurisdiction,” she said, according to ClickonDetroit.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
