It may very well be that after all the smoke clears former Vice President Joe Biden has defeated President Donald Trump to become the 46th President of the United States.
But the counting is not over, and neither is the need for serious scrutiny as irregularities are being discovered.
On Thursday the Michigan Republican Party held a press conference and said that a glitch in the tabulating software in one county gave 6,000 Republican votes, including those for President Trump, to Democrats.
One Michigan county clerk caught a glitch in tabulation software so they hand counted votes and found the glitch caused 6,000 votes to go to Biden + Democrats that were meant for Trump and Republicans. 47 MI counties used this software. All must check now! pic.twitter.com/21AXyJZDZi
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) November 6, 2020
“In Antrim County, ballots were counted for Democrats that were meant for Republicans, causing a 6000-vote swing against our candidates,” Michigan GOP Chairwoman Laura Cox said.
“The county clerk came forward and said tabulating software glitched and caused a miscalculation of the votes. Since then, we have now discovered that 47 counties used this same software in the same capacity,” she added. “Antrim County had to hand count all of the ballots and these counties that used this software need to closely examine their result for similar discrepancies.”
However, the Michigan Department of State said late Friday that the problem was a user error rather than a glitch: “The erroneous reporting of unofficial results from Antrim county was a result of accidental error on the part of the Antrim County clerk.”
“All ballots were properly tabulated. However, the clerk accidentally did not update the software used to collect voting machine data and report unofficial results,” election officials said.
Still, we are talking about 6,000 votes in just one county out of the 47 counties that used this tabulating software. It’s not known at this time whether Michigan elections officials have a record of software updates throughout the state.
Republican Party Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said she believes there are other irregularities in the state that could change the results of the election.
We have documented irregularities in Michigan.
In Wayne County, poll watchers were kept in the dark with blocked windows & padlocked doors.
At the TCF Center, a whistleblower said their supervisor asked them to illegally put dates on ballots. pic.twitter.com/VX5Lt0MYuK
— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) November 6, 2020
“We have seen a lot of irregularities,” she told anchor Bret Baier. “We’ve been pursuing reports coming in on our hotline, people who were disenfranchised from observing the vote count and some more serious allegations that we’re seeing.”
At a press conference on Thursday McDaniel said that both sides should be helping to investigate these claims of irregularities.
“It needs to be pursued, not just by Republicans but also by Democrats. Because if we are going to come out of this and say this was a fair and free election, what we are hearing from the city of Detroit is deeply troubling,” she said.
“So we are going to pursue this. You know, the media, Joe Biden, have all said be patient. We should all be patient. But we should also be patient as we pursue these irregularities,” the chairwoman declared.
But McDaniel’s uncle, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, a world-renowned squish, said that the president was “wrong” for his rhetoric.
— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) November 6, 2020
“He is wrong to say that the election was rigged, corrupt and stolen — doing so damages the cause of freedom here and around the world, weakens the institutions that lie at the foundation of the Republic, and recklessly inflames destructive and dangerous passions,” the senator said.
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated with new information that has come to light about the software issues in Antrim County. At the time of this report, the county clerk had not yet determined whether the problems were caused by a software glitch or human error.
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