Misinformation campaign concerning Antrim County expected to continue
Voters urged to be wary of false claims
On Sunday, individuals with no apparent technical expertise in election technology were permitted to gather images of Dominion voting equipment in Antrim County. While the information they gathered is subject to a court-issued protective order, the Michigan Department of State warns voters to be wary of the claims that the group may make in coming days. Members of the group have previously made false statements, shared fake documents and made baseless claims about the election that have been widely debunked and rejected in multiple courts.
“It is disappointing, though not surprising, that the primary goal of this group is to continue spreading false information designed to erode the public’s confidence in the election. By doing so, they injure our democracy and dishonor the 5.5. million Michigan citizens who cast ballots,” said Michigan Department of State spokesperson Jake Rollow. “As Attorney General William Barr, the FBI and CISA have found, this was the most secure election in our nation’s history and, despite unprecedented scrutiny, there has been no evidence of widespread fraud identified whatsoever.”
If any candidate truly thought that the Dominion machines failed to correctly count ballots, they could and should have requested a hand-recount of ballots. No recounts of state elections were requested in Antrim County.
The Antrim County unofficial reporting error has already been thoroughly explained and did not impact tabulation. It was prompted by the clerk not updating media drives in some of the machines in Antrim County, an accidental human error. Reporting errors are common, and always caught and corrected in the county canvass, if not before, as was the case in Antrim County. More information is available on the MDOS Fact Check webpage, Michigan.gov/SOSFactCheck.
To further safeguard public confidence, the Bureau of Elections will be working with clerks to conduct an audit of all ballots in Antrim County. While there is no evidence the tabulators malfunctioned in any way, the audit of all ballots cast in the presidential election will confirm all machines counted ballots properly and will disprove the ongoing disinformation campaign attempting to undermine confidence in the election.
The Bureau of Elections and clerks will also conduct a statewide risk-limiting audit that will confirm tabulators across the state functioned properly. A statewide pilot risk-limiting audit demonstrated the accuracy of the machines following the March 10, 2020, presidential primary. Procedural audits of precincts and absent voter counting boards will also be conducted in more than 200 jurisdictions. A preliminary list of the jurisdictions will be released this week.
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