As a tornado of disinformation regarding the vote count has descended on Wisconsin, political spinmeisters have seized upon a lapse by a Milwaukee election officer to falsely claim evidence of voter fraud in a critical swing state decided by a little more than 20,000 votes. Claire Woodall-Vogg, Milwaukee’s chief election official, briefly misplaced a flash drive containing vote counts on Election Night, she said in a Nov. 9 letter to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. About 3 a.m. on Nov. 4, as poll workers finished counting absentee ballots in Milwaukee, she delivered several flash drives containing absentee vote tallies to the Milwaukee County Election Commission — and realized that she had left one in a tabulator at the central counting center. She called a member of her team, who retrieved the flash drive and a police officer delivered it shortly afterward. “I believe it is important to document that the flash drive was never left unattended and that the staff had remained in the room throughout the process,” Woodall-Vogg said. “The incident bears no impact on the validity of the results.” Nothing indicates that the contents of the flash drive were altered. Asked by Wisconsin Watch to address the incident, Reid Magney, spokesman for the bipartisan Wisconsin Elections Commission, said, “We are confident that there are no issues with the election results in Milwaukee.”
Michigan: Pro-Trump forces spin legal wheels in challenging election results | Paul Egan Clara Hendrickson/Detroit Free Press
Lawsuits filed in the wrong courts. Naming the wrong defendants. Alleging facts with no connection to the defendants being sued. Forces backing Republican President Donald Trump have filed at least five lawsuits in state and federal courts in Michigan seeking to delay or stop the state’s certification of 16 electoral votes for Democratic President-elect Joe Biden. With every Michigander’s vote cast and counted in the presidential contest, showing Biden defeating Trump by close to 150,000 votes according to the unofficial tally, elections workers statewide are now undertaking the tedious process of officially certifying the vote and converting the state’s popular vote into the state’s Electoral College votes. That process relies on local and state election officials meeting a series of tight deadlines and fulfilling their legal duties. And derailing this process appears to be a goal the lawsuits all share. The suits could create significant complications if they produced court orders delaying certification of election results in key Michigan counties beyond Tuesday’s deadline, or dragged out thecertification of statewide results beyond the Dec. 8 “safe harbor” date by which Congress is required to accept Michigan’s electoral votes. But the suits have been marked by unusual legal missteps and repeated judicial setbacks. Some analysts say it is difficult to discern a coherent strategy, other than to seek to undermine overall confidence in the elections process.
Full Article: Pro-Trump forces remain hitless in Michigan election challenges