Michigan voters file federal lawsuit seeking to toss 1.2M ballots by Zachary Halaschak
The stack of Michigan lawsuits filed in the aftermath of the election is continuing to pile up, with a new one in federal court seeking to toss out some 1.2 million votes in Michigan.
The lawsuit was filed by four voters on Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan. The litigation seeks to overturn ballots in Washtenaw, Ingham, and Wayne counties. Wayne County has already been the target of a federal lawsuit filed by the Trump campaign one week after the election.
Those three counties combined represent about 1.2 million votes of the state’s approximately 5.5 million votes cast in this year’s election. The plaintiffs are Lena Bally and Gavriel Grossbard, both of Oakland County, Carol Hatch of Eaton County, and Steven Butler of Jackson County.
The suit contends that “sufficient evidence exists to place in doubt presidential-election results” in the counties listed, specifically “issues with transparency, fraudulent changing of dates, a software glitch, clerical errors, illegal votes, and many other issues and irregularities.”
The document cites dozens of news articles and reports of Republican accusations of fraud in the Michigan election.
The legal relief being sought by the plaintiffs is for the judge to “declare that the inclusion of illegal votes in identified counties violates Voters’ right to vote under the First and Fourteenth Amendment by vote-dilution disenfranchisement” and to invalidate them.
If the long shot lawsuit were successful, it would overturn enough votes to flip the election in President Trump’s favor.
At least two lawsuits alleging electoral wrongdoing were quickly shot down in state court. Prior to the federal lawsuit, a Trump campaign lawsuit in state court was ruled against the day after it was filed. Another lawsuit from a nonprofit group alleging fraud in Wayne County was also ruled against.
President-elect Joe Biden leads Trump in Michigan by nearly 150,000 votes.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson has denied that any fraud occurred in her state and has hailed the election as running appropriately and without issue.
“In Michigan, I am proud to confirm that all valid ballots, and only valid ballots, have been counted, securely and accurately, and that our election results reflect the will of the people,” she said soon after the initial results were tabulated.
It is unclear when action will be taken in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan for either the Trump campaign’s federal lawsuit or the lawsuit filed by the four voters seeking to overturn ballots in the three counties.
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