Conservative activists are knocking on doors across Michigan to hunt for evidence of “ghost votes” and other alleged “anomalies” used to re-litigate the 2020 election.
A spokesperson for the Michigan Secretary of State said residents have no obligation to answer questions about how they voted and pointed to 250 statewide audits that affirmed President Joe Biden’s victory. Organizers with Election Integrity Fund and Force said the door-to-door canvassing effort, announced at a Tuesday rally outside the state Capitol, is modeled after a similar attempt in Arizona to discredit the 2020 election.
“The people of Michigan spoke clearly and unequivocally last November,” said Tracy Wimmer, spokesperson for the Michigan Department of State. “Any effort to violate citizens’ privacy or intimidate them by showing up at their doorstep demanding to know how they voted is a desperate attempt to further sow seeds of doubt about election results that were a secure and accurate reflection of the will of the voters.”
Related: Republican activists plan petition to force ‘forensic audit’ of Michigan 2020 election
Organizers said volunteers are already visiting homes in Oakland and Macomb counties. Oakland County Clerk Lisa Brown expressed concerns that the so-called “evidence” created by canvassing efforts will be used to boost misinformation about the 2020 election.
“This effort sounds like voter intimidation,” Brown said.
Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini said Republican state House candidate Jacky Eubanks turned in several reports that were determined to be not credible. Forlini said he appreciates the “hard work” of private canvassers, but their efforts haven’t turned up evidence of fraud “so far.”
Liz Harris, a real estate agent and Republican who unsuccessfully ran for an Arizona state House seat in 2020, promoted the private canvassing effort in Lansing. Harris released a report that purported to reveal fraud “on a massive scale,” but election officials said the results are inaccurate and unscientific.
“They don’t want the canvas, they’re afraid of us knocking doors and finding out the truth,” Harris told a crowd of several hundred Trump supporters in Lansing on Tuesday.
Rob Macomber, chief deputy clerk for Kent County, said door-to-door canvassing efforts are likely to run into issues with accuracy.
“Having gone door to door from a candidate angle, people say that they vote and they don’t, or they say that they don’t vote and you know they do,” Macomber said. “The whole thing is ripe for conflict of privacy. Certainly, voter registration and voter history data is public information, but this new idea of getting that directly from the voter, there’s just a lot of concerns we have related to privacy and intimidation and I think that would be the same concern shared by any elected official.”
Brown said visiting addresses is flawed because some people have likely moved in the last year.
“They’re trying to find all these workarounds of things to find something that doesn’t exist,” Brown said. “There’s no such thing as a forensic audit. Our elections are secure. Our results were accurate, and it’s just unfortunate that they can’t accept that.”
Harris said Michigan may be “the next domino to fall” in a national effort to decertify election results in battleground states. Michigan’s Republican-majority Legislature resisted demands to force a third-party “forensic audit” of the election and a committee investigation led by Senate Republicans found “no evidence of widespread or systemic fraud.”
Former President Donald Trump threatened to endorse primary challengers against any Michigan Republican who does not support more investigation into the election. Biden won Michigan with 2.8 million votes, while Trump earned 2.6 million votes, according to the official results.
“Hopefully, each one of these cowardly RINOs, whose names will be identified and forthcoming, will be primaried with my complete and total endorsement in the upcoming election,” Trump said in a Wednesday statement.
Election Integrity Fund and Force is touring six Northern Michigan cities with Republican attorney general candidate Matthew DePerno to recruit volunteers for the canvassing effort. Sandy Kissel, an organizer with the group, encouraged attendees in Lansing to “join the force” and pressure lawmakers to start more investigations into Michigan’s election results.
“We have no idea what really happened in this election,” Kissel said.
Organizers said the effort is nonpartisan, but several speakers at the Tuesday rally claimed the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump. Speakers denounced audits conducted by the Michigan Secretary of State and an upcoming audit in Macomb County.
The county hired Pro V&V, a firm that was involved in an investigation of voting machines in Arizona, to review voting software.
“I don’t want anybody thinking we’re covering anything up,” Forlini said. “I want to make sure everyone understands the protocols and what we’re doing.”
Macomber said efforts to conduct additional investigations into election results are misguided.
“It’s frustrating because we were the first county in Michigan to invite the public into the audits that we do,” Macomber said. “Everybody’s talking about ‘forensic audits, which aren’t really a real thing, but we actually do audit elections.”
Speakers cited a review of election results in Arizona’s Maricopa County, though the report affirmed Biden’s victory there. Regardless, several speakers claimed the report revealed concerns about election security. Harris’ “grassroots canvass report” has been widely shared online after the Arizona audit failed to show widespread fraud affected the state’s results.
“Because the result isn’t what these individuals want, there’s going to be another attempt to somehow arrive at a conclusion they want,” said Ottawa County Clerk Justin Roebuck.
Roebuck said he’s concerned that activist groups are trying to mobilize people to undermine the nation’s election processes.
“Our election process is secure,” Roebuck said. “Can it be improved? Yeah, absolutely, we need to look at those ways we can improve the process, but we also need to stop lying to people.”
Joanne Bakale, another organizer with Election Integrity Fund and Force, questioned how a larger number of Michigan residents registered to vote in 2020 compared to past elections. Michigan recorded 8 million registered voters for the November 2020 election, and 5.5 million people cast a ballot.
The Michigan Constitution was amended in 2018 through a voter-backed ballot initiative that made it easier for citizens to register to vote. Eligible voters are automatically registered when they update information with the Secretary of State unless they decline. Voters can also register to vote on election day, when previously they had to register 30 days before an election.
Macomber said voter registration was also higher in Kent County last year due to population growth. Macomber said it’s not surprising to see voter registration numbers increase since the changes were implemented.
“My message to the people yesterday at the Capitol is if you have questions about people who voted and who didn’t vote, seek that from our election officials, rather than knocking on doors to try to obtain that,” Macomber said.
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