Wayne County Circuit Chief Judge Timothy M. Kenny on Friday denied a request for an independent audit of the votes cast by Wayne County voters, separate from the one already being undertaken by the county’s board of canvassers.
The lawsuit, filed this week against local election officials, alleges that they oversaw a fraudulent election in Detroit. The lawsuit asked the court to stop the certification of the county’s election results, void the Nov. 3 election and order a new one. President-elect Joe Biden won the county by a margin of nearly 323,000 votes.
In his opinion, Kenny wrote: “It would be an unprecedented exercise of judicial activism for this Court to stop the certification process of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers.” David Fink, the attorney who represented the City of Detroit, its Election Commission and City Clerk Janice Winfrey in the case, was pleased with Kenny’s ruling. “Once again, the court record showed conclusively the Detroit City Clerk ran a fair and proper election.” David Kallman, the lawyer who filed the lawsuit on behalf of two Wayne County residents, said he plans to file an emergency appeal in the Michigan Court of Appeals.
During a hearing Wednesday, Kallman accused local election officials of running a fraudulent election and argued that he had the right to ask the court to stop the certification of the election results….
One of the affidavits filed by a Republican challenger at TCF, who heard from other challengers that vehicles with out-of-state license plates delivered tens of thousands of ballots to TCF at 4:30 a.m., claimed that every one of these ballots were cast for president-elect Joe Biden. Kenny wrote that the affidavit was “rife with speculation and sinister motives.” The state’s deadline for returning absentee ballots is 8 p.m. on Election Day and all ballots were verified as having been cast by eligible voters before they were delivered to TCF, Thomas explained in his affidavit.
In evaluating another affidavit filed by a Republican challenger, Kenny wrote that the challenger posted on Facebook that the Democrats had planned to commit fraud on Election Day. “His predilection to believe fraud was occurring undermines his credibility as a witness,” the judge wrote.
Kenny also refuted the claim that Republican challengers were singled out in being prevented from reentering TCF when the counting area became overcrowded. During Wednesday afternoon’s hearing, Kallman resurfaced a false claim that went viral on social media channels and was repeated by President Donald Trump in a speech last week, that election officials barred Republican challengers from observing the counting process….
Judge Kenny denied a previous request to stop the certification of Wayne County’s election results in a separate case.
Two federal cases filed in the U.S. District Court for Western Michigan making similar allegations of election fraud are pending. One lawsuit — filed by four voters — asks the court to exclude the votes cast by Ingham, Washtenaw and Wayne county voters from the final tallies in the presidential contest and stop the certification of Michigan’s presidential electors if these counties’ votes are not excluded. That would amount to throwing out more than 1.2 million votes and would hand a victory in Michigan to President Donald Trump by a margin of over 323,000 votes. But the lawsuit faces a significant hurdle: Washtenaw’s Board of Canvassers certified the county’s election results Thursday. Another lawsuit — filed by the Trump campaign — asks the court to stop the Board of State Canvassers from certifying the election results.