Michigan has been a hotbed for election fraud conspiracy theories since 2020, but this year extremist election deniers have filled roles on election canvassing boards that are responsible for tallying votes and certifying the state’s elections.
The bipartisan boards in several different Michigan counties now have GOP canvassers who still question Joe Biden’s victory and promote falsehoods about the 2020 election being stolen.
Katherine Riley, who serves on the Board of Canvassers in Wayne County — which includes the heavily Democratic city of Detroit and has the largest number of Michigan voters — has continued to deny the results of the 2020 election, has repeated election conspiracy narratives and even led training sessions attempting to expose fraud in the last presidential election.
While these canvassing board members would appear to pose a threat to this week’s midterm elections, voting advocacy groups say they are prepared.
“We’re expecting challenges, but we know that those challenges are illegitimate,” said Nancy Wang, executive director of Voters Not Politicians, a nonpartisan advocacy organization. “We know that they’re not going to have merit, and they’re not going to break down our systems or the will of the voters,”
Election deniers may try to apply a variety of tactics to disrupt legitimate vote counting, Wang added, but the election system has been tried and tested before and repeatedly proved to be safe and secure.
This story was originally published by Salon. Read more here: https://www.salon.com/2022/11/08/deniers-are-embedded-in-michigan-canvassing-boards–advocates-say-theyre-ready/
