About 300 absentee ballots from the 2020 election were discovered in a Michigan storage shed, according to a local news report.
The ballots were discovered in a storage unit in Genesee County—a Michigan county made up of the town of Flint and Thetford Township—through the efforts of Thetford Township Supervisor Rachel Stanke.
Stanke told The Epoch Times that she became aware of the possible existence of the ballots in 2021, at which point she said she contacted the state’s attorney general and secretary of state.
Stanke was advised of the ballots’ existence by an employee at the township clerk’s office, who had discovered them in November 2021 while cleaning out a storage unit for the clerk. Upon discovering the documents, the unnamed employee reported them to the clerk but was unsure if anything was ever reported about the discovery. At that point, she went to Stanke to see about following up on the discovery.
Upon contacting Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Stanke was put in contact with Jonathan Brater, director of elections in the state.
Stanke was told by Brater during a phone call that Thetford Township was one of 20 or so places in the state that had been audited and that everything about the election looked good, despite Stanke’s discovery of the ballots. Stanke said this response left her “frustrated” in view of the employee’s discovery.
“So I get off the phone with him,” Stanke said, “and you know, we sent a couple of emails. I was a little frustrated.”
A couple of months later, Stanke followed up with the employee who had discovered the ballots, reporting that she had been advised that there were no problems by Brater. However, Stanke offered to make a report with the Michigan State Police if the employee would agree to testify, which she did.
Later, the previous deputy clerk of the township was cleaning out the storage unit when she came across the box of documents. Stanke said she had a “hunch” that the documents were the missing ballots and contacted the Michigan State Police with the update.
A state trooper came to Stanke’s house and took the updated report.
Afterward, the state trooper spoke with the former employee who had discovered them as well as the deputy clerk, at which point the documents were finally recovered from the storage units.
“He pulled out this box of documents that happened to be the 289 ballots,” Stanke said.
Concerns
The ballots, it turned out, had never been filled out. But Stanke’s investigation into the matter still uncovered potential concerns.She explained the process behind absentee voting in Michigan: “The process of being an absentee voter is, you go get an application, complete your application, and you submit it to the clerk’s office. The clerk then is responsible to send you a ballot through the mail so that you can vote at home at your residence. So these people did their application, they just never received their ballot in the mail.”
When a ballot isn’t sent out, gets lost in the mail, or is for whatever reason never delivered, a voter can at that point request that the ballot be “spoiled,” meaning that it’s no longer considered a valid ballot.
“Of these 289 ballots, there was a majority of them that people did write that letter, from what we understand,” Stanke said. “But those people did get to vote. They spoiled their original ballot and they voted.”
But not all of the ballots were spoiled, Stanke said, and she contested characterizing the situation as having had a relatively limited effect on the election.
“This is where my biggest concern comes off of that state audit: 39 people never got a ballot to vote,” she said. “I am a person who says every vote should count. So you have 39 people in our township who did not even get a vote. I don’t think that there’s anything right about that.”
Twenty-six voters never spoiled their ballot but, according to the results of the audit relayed by Stanke, still ended up voting in person. Stanke said this raised “red flags,” hinting that, had the ballots been delivered as planned, some people could have been able to double vote.
“So you’re telling me a person could have technically voted twice, right?” she said. “I mean, that’s what I’m getting out of it—they had two active ballots. They voted in person and they still to this day have an active ballot.
“It’s very interesting to me that there are these cracks in our system.”
Stanke said the ballots likely would have had no effect on national elections but could have affected the outcome of the local election. Katie Hicks, the rival to the current clerk of Thetford Township, lost her election by only 19 votes. This outcome absolutely could have been different had these ballots been properly handled, according to Stanke.
Hicks has publicly commented on the allegations, which were reported to Thetford Township residents at a city meeting.
“Now this is all coming out and ... I’m kind of happy that it’s coming out because the election is right around the corner again,” she said. “And it concerns me that this will take place again in 2024.”
Stanke agreed.
Despite the proximity of another election next year, Stanke reported that it can take years for such disputes to be adjudicated in court, prompting concerns that the issues that allowed this situation to arise could arise again in 2024.
Michigan, one of the most crucial battleground states in 2020, was captured by President Joe Biden by a 2.78-point margin.
