Michigan
Costantino v. Detroit
Filed: Nov. 9
Claim: The plaintiffs were two poll challengers — representatives of the Republican Party allowed to monitor the vote counting — who alleged fraud and misconduct during the vote count last week at the TCF Center in Detroit. The lawsuit asked the court to block certification of the election results in Wayne County (which includes Detroit), where more than 867,000 people voted.
The plaintiffs claimed that election workers were instructed “to not verify signatures on absentee ballots, to backdate absentee ballots, and to process such ballots regardless of their validity.” They presented five affidavits from other poll challengers who said, among other things, that they saw election workers enter Jan. 1, 1900, as the birth date of many absentee voters. The plaintiffs offered no corroborating evidence for the affidavits. They also falsely stated that Republican poll challengers could not observe the count.
Context: The plaintiffs misunderstood the process for verifying and tabulating absentee votes, according to Chris Thomas, the state director of elections in Michigan for 36 years before his retirement in 2017, who submitted an affidavit for the defendants, the City of Detroit and the Detroit Election Commission. He explained that election workers entered Jan. 1, 1900, as a placeholder when the computer system required them to type in a birth date but they could not access that information in the voter file.
Mr. Thomas also said that ballots received on Nov. 3 were entered on Nov. 4 after election workers discovered that they had not previously been fully processed. Finally, he explained that Detroit allows 134 challengers each from the Republican and Democratic Parties, and once those limits were reached, access for a new challenger was allowed when someone left the hall.
Status: Chief Judge Timothy M. Kenny of Wayne County Circuit Court denied the petition from the pro-Trump side. “It would be an unprecedented exercise of judicial activism for this court to stop the certification process of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers,” Judge Kenny wrote. “Plaintiffs’ interpretation of events is incorrect and not credible.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/13/us/politic...suits.html
Costantino v. Detroit
Filed: Nov. 9
Claim: The plaintiffs were two poll challengers — representatives of the Republican Party allowed to monitor the vote counting — who alleged fraud and misconduct during the vote count last week at the TCF Center in Detroit. The lawsuit asked the court to block certification of the election results in Wayne County (which includes Detroit), where more than 867,000 people voted.
The plaintiffs claimed that election workers were instructed “to not verify signatures on absentee ballots, to backdate absentee ballots, and to process such ballots regardless of their validity.” They presented five affidavits from other poll challengers who said, among other things, that they saw election workers enter Jan. 1, 1900, as the birth date of many absentee voters. The plaintiffs offered no corroborating evidence for the affidavits. They also falsely stated that Republican poll challengers could not observe the count.
Context: The plaintiffs misunderstood the process for verifying and tabulating absentee votes, according to Chris Thomas, the state director of elections in Michigan for 36 years before his retirement in 2017, who submitted an affidavit for the defendants, the City of Detroit and the Detroit Election Commission. He explained that election workers entered Jan. 1, 1900, as a placeholder when the computer system required them to type in a birth date but they could not access that information in the voter file.
Mr. Thomas also said that ballots received on Nov. 3 were entered on Nov. 4 after election workers discovered that they had not previously been fully processed. Finally, he explained that Detroit allows 134 challengers each from the Republican and Democratic Parties, and once those limits were reached, access for a new challenger was allowed when someone left the hall.
Status: Chief Judge Timothy M. Kenny of Wayne County Circuit Court denied the petition from the pro-Trump side. “It would be an unprecedented exercise of judicial activism for this court to stop the certification process of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers,” Judge Kenny wrote. “Plaintiffs’ interpretation of events is incorrect and not credible.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/13/us/politic...suits.html
