Michigan Election Officials Dispute Audit Report Saying Antrim County Machines Made Errors

A man fills in his ballot, in Lansing, Michigan, on Nov. 3, 2020. (John Moore/Getty Images)

Michigan elections officials and representatives for Dominion Voting Systems disputed a report after a security group carried out a forensic audit of voting machines in Antrim County.

Michigan Elections Director Jonathan Brater, in a court filing, said the report "makes a series of unsupported conclusions, ascribes motives of fraud and obfuscation to processes that are easily explained as routine election procedures or error corrections, and suggests without explanation that elements of election software not used in Michigan are somehow responsible for tabulation or reporting errors that are either nonexistent or easily explained."

It came as Allied Security Operations Group, the company that carried out the audit on behalf of an Antrim County plaintiff, William Bailey, wrote that "Dominion Voting System is intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results."

“The system intentionally generates an enormously high number of ballot errors. The electronic ballots are then transferred for adjudication. The intentional errors lead to bulk adjudication of ballots with no oversight, no transparency, and no audit trail. This leads to voter or election fraud," according to the report, which was Russell Ramsland of Allied Security Operations Group.

Allied and Ramsland further argued that Dominion's machines present a "national security issue" and made references to the 2018 executive order signed by President Donald Trump regarding foreign interference.

“We recommend that an independent group should be empaneled to determine the extent of the adjudication errors throughout the State of Michigan. This is a national security issue,” the report added.

Judge Kevin Elsenheimer of Michigan's 13th Circuit Court ordered the release of the Allied Security report after a hearing on Monday.

Brater said the Allied Security report makes alleged references to ranked-choice voting, which is not authorized for use in Michigan elections. He further stipulated that the Allied report incorrectly stated that it's improper to divert write-in ballots for adjudication by a clerk's office, adding that it doesn't allow administrators to "change votes" from one person to another.

"Because voting tabulators in Michigan use hand-marked, paper ballots, any alleged errors in tabulators can be caught during a hand recount, which any candidate could have requested in Antrim County," Brater said. "This week the Michigan Bureau of Elections and Antrim County will also be conducting a hand tally of all ballots cast in the presidential election in Antrim County, which will provide further verification that the Antrim County results are accurate."

Dominion Voting Systems told the Detroit Free Press, after the report was released, that it "has been the target of a continuing malicious and widespread disinformation campaign aimed at eroding confidence in the integrity of the 2020 presidential election." Previously, the firm said its machines cannot switch votes from one candidate to another.