A dozen votes were switched to President Trump after one Michigan county completed its vote recount.
Antrim County, an area in which Dominion Voting Systems were used in the 2020 election and has drawn the attention of Trump and his allies, completed its audit of the 15,962 votes cast and affirmed Trump’s victory there, giving the Republican incumbent 12 new votes. However, President-elect Joe Biden won the state of Michigan and its 16 Electoral College votes by roughly 150,000 ballots.
Out of the total votes cast in Antrim County, 9,747 votes were won by Trump and 5,960 went to Biden, according to the certified results. A bipartisan team of clerks joined the Antrim County Clerk’s Office and the Michigan Bureau of Elections to conduct the “risk limiting audit.” In a tweet on Thursday, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said the audit “confirmed the truth and affirmed the facts” of the election.
“Dominion’s voting machines accurately tabulated votes cast for President. Now it’s time for the disinformation campaigns to end, and for all leaders to unequivocally affirm the Nov election was secure, accurate & fair,” Benson wrote in the tweet.
The county has been under scrutiny by Trump, his legal team, and their Republican allies, particularly after 6,000 votes were erroneously tabulated for Biden instead of Trump in an initial tally. The problem was later attributed to human error rather than Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion, which has machines that were used across the country, has vociferously denied allegations about the company being involved in a massive voter fraud scheme, billing them as being part of a “disinformation” effort.
John Poulos, the CEO of Dominion, offered to testify before the Michigan state Senate to debunk allegations of voter fraud and decried a report produced by the cyberfirm the Allied Security Operations Group that said it found Dominion Voting Systems had an error rate of 68.05%. The Dominion audit took place as part of a case that does not directly relate to the presidential election but rather a challenge against a local marijuana retailer proposal that barely passed after a few damaged ballots were not included in a retabulation.
“I have difficultly knowing where to begin on this. Michigan doesn’t use ranked-choice voting. A simple review of Antrim’s ballots easily confirms this,” Poulos said during a testimony.
“Although some Michigan counties require that tabulation systems transmit unofficial election results from the precincts via modems on closed networks, Antrim County does not use modems,” he added.
On Monday, the Electoral College voted to make Biden the next president, effectively ending Trump’s chances to overturn the results of the election. However, the Trump legal team believes it still has time to act, signaling it’ll continue the fight into January. Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis argue that the president’s legal team still has latitude to make its various cases to courts, basing its argument on a dissent given by the late liberal Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the 2000 case Bush v. Gore, which granted the presidency to Republican George Bush over Democrat Al Gore.
“But none of these dates has ultimate significance in light of Congress’ detailed provisions for determining, on ‘the sixth day of January,’ the validity of electoral votes,” Ginsburg wrote.
On Jan. 6, Congress will perform its constitutional obligation to count and certify the votes of the Electoral College, but lawmakers do have the ability to object to the votes. But for that objection to be honored, it must be written by hand and signed by both a member of the House and a member of the Senate. However, it is unlikely the objections lead to a change in the results in Trump’s favor, with the House in Democratic control and many Republican senators acknowledging Biden as the victor.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told his fellow Republicans in a telephone conference call not to block Biden’s win, and no GOP member on the call reportedly objected to McConnell’s request.
