Tens of Thousands of Unsealed Ballots Arrived in Michigan County, All for Democrats: Lawsuit

Tens of thousands of unsealed, unsecured ballots—all cast for Democrats—arrived in vehicles with out-of-state license plates in Michigan’s Wayne County at 4:30 a.m. on the morning after Election Day, according to a lawsuit filed on Nov. 9.

“At approximately 4:30 a.m., tens of thousands of ballots were brought in and placed on eight long tables. Unlike the other ballots, these boxes were brought in from the rear of the room,” a sworn witness affidavit signed by Andrew Sitto, a poll challenger, states. “The same procedure was performed on the ballots that arrived at approximately 4:30 a.m., but I specifically noticed that every ballot I observed was cast for Joe Biden.”

“I heard other challengers say that several vehicles with out-of-state license plates pulled up to the TCF Center a little before 4:30 a.m. and unloaded boxes of ballots,” Sitto testified.

Sitto’s witness statement is one of six cited in a lawsuit (pdf) filed in Michigan on Monday by the Great Lakes Justice Center. The lawsuit alleges that poll workers were instructed to ignore signature mismatches, backdate ballots that arrived late, and push through ballots despite questions about their validity.

Sitto said the election official subsequently blocked the windows of the room he was in with cardboard and refused to let him reenter after he left for a break.

According to another sworn affidavit, the names on the ballots that arrived in the boxes did not appear on either the qualified voter file (QVF) or the supplemental lists for voters who registered shortly before Election Day.

“I saw the computer operators at several counting boards manually adding the names and addresses of these thousands of ballots to the QVF system,” Robert Cushman, a poll challenged in Detroit, said in a sworn affidavit. “When I asked what the possible justification was to counting ballots from unknown, unverified ‘persons,’ I was told by election supervisors that the Wayne County Clerk’s Office had ‘checked them out.'”

Cushman challenged the process of counting those votes and noted that the poll workers entered the birthdays for each of the purported voters as 1/1/1900.

“When I asked about this impossibility of each ballot having the same birthday occurring in 1900, I was told that was the instruction that came down from the Wayne County Clerk’s office,” Cushman said. “I was surprised and disappointed at the preponderance of dishonesty, irregularities, and fraudulent tactics at the November 3, 2020 election at the TCF Center.”

According to another poll watcher, Daniel Gustafson, the ballots arrived in mail boxes with open tops and no seals at the TCF Center in Detroit.

“The ballot bins were not marked or identified in any way to indicate their source of origin,” Gustafson said.

Former Vice President Joe Biden held a 146,137 vote lead over President Donald Trump in Michigan as of 12:35 p.m. on Monday. Neither Michigan nor any other state has certified the results of the 2020 presidential election.

In addition to upcoming recounts in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign is litigating election challenges in Pennsylvania and Arizona.

David Fink, the lead counsel for the defendants, called the allegations in the lawsuit baseless.

“Like two previous lawsuits, this case is not based upon actual evidence of any election fraud or misconduct. It is based upon various conspiracy theories, which have already been debunked. We are confident that this case, like the others filed last week, will be dismissed,” Fink said in a statement.

“There were more than 200 Republican challengers in the room at the TCF Center, but only five such people have come forward to support these claims, which actually tells us how well the process was run.”

Cathy He contributed to this report.