A Michigan mother who was one of two Republicans on a panel appointed to certify the Detroit-area election results said she faced “heartbreaking” attacks, including being called a racist, when she raised objections over potential irregularities.
She and the other Republican member of the board changed their votes against certifying election results Tuesday with little explanation after enduring nearly three hours of insults and intimidation, including mentions of their children.
In a statement late Wednesday, Wayne County canvassing board chairwoman Monica Palmer called it “heartbreaking” to sit and listen to people attack her.
“The Democrats went off the hinges trying to suggest we wanted to suppress the black vote, and that was not the case. Our concern was in Detroit, Livonia, and other communities that had unexplained imbalances,” Palmer said. “There was not mob rule, but there was a lot of pressure to certify. It was not easy to sit there and listen to all of the threats on the Zoom call and on social media.”
Palmer said that she decided to certify the result because a Democratic member of the board gave her “the promise that an audit that was supposedly going to occur.”
Democrat Abraham Aiyash, who is representative-elect for Michigan’s State House District 4 after running unopposed, took aim at Palmer and brought up the school her children likely attend.
“You, Miss Monica Palmer from Grosse Pointe Woods, which has a history of racism, are deciding to enable and continue to perpetuate the racist history of this country. And I want you to think about what that means for your kids, who probably go to Grosse Pointe North,” Aiyash said, a reference to a public high school in Palmer’s neighborhood.
Aiyash, on Wednesday morning, claimed that he did not mean to expose private information about Palmer’s family maliciously.
“Yesterday, after a failed attempt to disenfranchise Detroit voters, folks spread a fake story that I threatened and ‘doxxed’ Monica Palmer,” Aiyash said in a tweet. “Y’all, I didn’t even know what doxxing was.”
The four-person panel’s two Republicans, Palmer and William Hartmann, initially voted against certifying the results of the election due to discrepancies in many precinct results. The 2-2 board deadlock would have meant that election results from the state’s most populous county, which includes the city of Detroit, would have been sent to a state elections board.
Mere minutes after the initial vote to deadlock, Michigan GOP Chairwoman Laura Cox sent out a press release that hailed the decision and said that it “would allow more time for us to get to the bottom of” allegations of election irregularities and fraud.
But the vote set off a furious, and ultimately successful, effort to get the GOP members to back down. Aiyash was not the only critic to bring up the Republican board members’ families during the public comment period.
“Your children will be disgusted, and I am sad that you have influence over them,” said Pastor Edward Pruitt.
“Monica, your daughter is gonna look at you in disgust because she’s going to know,” said Trische Duckworth. “And this is going to affect her because people will ask her, ‘Is your mother a racist?'”
“I’m sorry for your descendants, who will be so ashamed of you,” said poll worker Liza Bielby.
Palmer drew controversy when she said she would be open to certifying some of the results from the county’s jurisdictions but not Detroit and other mismatched areas. Some claimed it was an attempt at disenfranchisement, as Detroit is more than 78% black.
“You’re up there with George Wallace and Bull Connor and all those people. And your QAnon crap, that’s all gonna come out,” said Kim Hunter. “Get ready for the racism that you unleash.”
“I hope that your name lives in infamy of being — disenfranchising voters, and racist, and continuing Jim Crow laws, and the attitude of Jim Crow into 2020,” said Detroit Charter Revision Commissioner Denzel McCampbell.
One speaker, Ashley Daniels, accused Hartmann of being racist by not calling on people with “ethnic names” to provide comments. “They’re not that hard,” she said. “You’re racist, and you do not like women,” she added.
At the end of the public comment period, a Zoom live video that allowed the public to watch and participate in the meeting was mistakenly muted and cut off from showing the board for six minutes, 57 seconds. When the board returned, the members explained that they had unanimously voted to certify the election, although they demanded that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s office conduct a “comprehensive audit” of the results in the out-of-balance precincts.
“Did we have it muted for the whole thing?” Palmer asked when the stream returned.
“I think it was,” Hartmann responded.
“Oh, no,” Palmer said, collapsing her head into her hands.
They offered no explanation for their changed position at the time.
Attempts by the Washington Examiner to reach Hartmann Wednesday were unsuccessful.
Palmer previously came under fire for her involvement with a nonprofit activist political group called Taxpayers for Grosse Point Schools, which supported candidates in the community’s school board election. A complaint being investigated by the Wayne County Board of Ethics argues that her involvement with the board is “incompatible with her public office.”
Social media posts from Hartmann that portrayed former President Barack Obama as a pirate and falsely portrayed him as tied to Islamist terrorism also came under scrutiny on Tuesday.
Wayne County has been the center of most of the lawsuits and allegations of election fraud that the Trump campaign and Republicans in the state have levied. The Trump team’s federal lawsuit includes dozens of sworn affidavits from GOP poll challengers who claim to have witnessed electoral malfeasance, in particular at the TCF Center in Detroit, where absentee ballots were tabulated. Some claim they endured harassment and “intimidation” from poll workers.
