Detroit Poll Watcher Expresses Concerns

Updated:

The TFC Convention Center in Detroit has seen daily protests since Wayne County was called, with Democratic nominee Joe Biden winning the county at 68 percent, leaving President Donald Trump behind at just 30 percent. Since Election Night, pro-Trump protesters have gathered outside of the TFC Center to contest the results.

One GOP poll watcher told NTD on Saturday that he observed ballots being counted at a slow pace. After watching the processing speed from his table, and talking to other poll watchers observing other tables, they calculated only 7,000 ballots that could have actually been counted on Election Night.

“And I got a feeling they were intentionally slowing down the process. So they will leave the bulk of the counting to be done when no GOP representative is available,” the poll watcher, who wanted to remain anonymous, said.

He says the GOP watchers were told that they should be done at 5 a.m., but at around 4 a.m., another truck came in with more ballots. He said election officials told the watchers they'll wait for the next shift of poll watchers before counting the newly arrived ballots.

“So this truck came in and unloaded some ballots, one of my friends was watching that he actually took down the license number and the number of boxes they took down from the truck. And we’re told by the people working there saying there’s about 38,000 ballots just came back from the city clerk. God knows when that got in. And they are put in here for count for the next shift.”

So he decided to do some digging—finding a list of names circulating on social media claiming to be records of “illegal votes cast.” After doing the fact check on Michigan’s voter database website, some people whose ballots were marked as “received” were born in the year 1900.

“So the next person is called James Bradley, also born in 1900, in January.”

That’s one example out of a list of 12,000. During our fact check process we found that it appears some of these records are in the process of being deleted from the Michigan database. For example, when this GOP poll watcher first searched for a woman named June Aiken, born in 1900, she was shown as registered and her ballot was received on October 8th. But that data has since been deleted. When checking for the same person now, it shows “no voter registered.”

Another claim being disputed in Michigan is covered windows during ballot counts. Election’s officials defended their decision to cover the windows, telling CNN that some windows were covered because “poll workers inside those windows expressed concerns about people outside the center photographing and filming them and their work.”

NTD contacted the elections officials for clarification but no response was given.

On Friday, Michigan’s Antrim county uncovered skewed results that when corrected took a 30 percent lead from Biden and flipped the county red. The county initially reported that 62 percent of voters elected Biden, but updated results show Trump actually won with 56 percent to Biden’s 42 percent.

Antrim County officials have not identified what caused the skewed results to begin with.