Michigan election officials are firing back at a report, compiled by a company working with President Donald Trump’s election attorneys and allies, that claims a voting machine error “flipped” thousands of votes in Antrim County to Joe Biden from President Trump.
The report, Michigan’s Director of Elections Jonathan Brater said in a statement to the court signed under oath on Dec. 13, “makes a series of unsupported conclusions, ascribes motives of fraud and obfuscation to processes that are easily explained as routine election procedures or error corrections, and suggests without explanation that elements of election software not used in Michigan are somehow responsible for tabulation or reporting errors that are either nonexistent or easily explained.”
Dominion voting systems, the company that made the machines Antrim County uses, also responded to the report, claiming that the “audit” was actually part of a “continuing malicious and widespread disinformation campaign” against Dominion as a company as well as other voting machine manufacturers.
The response is the latest salvo in an ongoing legal battle between Trump supporters and Michigan’s election apparatus and the “forensic audit report of Dominion voting machines” compiled by Allied Security Operations Group, “a firm,” The Daily Wire noted previously, “that has worked with lawyers for Trump and his allies on election challenges,” is part of litigation on behalf of an allegedly disenfranchised Antrim County voter.
The litigation centers around an incident that took place on election night, when 6,000 Antrim County votes were tabulated for Democrat Joe Biden when they had been cast for Donald Trump. The switch was quickly corrected, but Trump’s allies maintain the incident is evidence of an effort to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential elections.
Michigan’s Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, responded to the incident immediately, chalking the switch up to “human error.”
“Antrim County election officials discovered that ‘human error’ flipped 6,000 votes from Trump to Biden after Bailey alerted them to some inconsistencies in the county’s reporting of the vote,” the Daily Wire reported. “The Michigan Secretary of State’s office said that ‘the clerk accidentally did not update the software used to collect voting machine data and report unofficial results.’”
Allied claims, in its audit, that the voting machines were to blame.
“The Antrim County Clerk and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson have stated that the election night error detailed above by the vote ‘flip’ from Trump to Biden, was the result of human error caused by the failure to update the Mancelona Township tabulator prior to election night for a down-ballot race,” the group’s report notes. “We disagree and conclude that the vote flip occurred because of machine error built into the voting software designed to create error.”
Michigan’s electors met on Monday despite lingering questions about Antrim’s votes, and cast their ballots for Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden, sealing the state’s results, which had already been certified. President Donald Trump’s central legal challenge to Michigan’s election results was dismissed earlier this month and, although Trump has pledged to continue pursuing his case, Congress is likely to affirm the results of Monday’s Electoral Collge vote when they meet on January 6th.