Judge Orders Michigan County to Pay $10,000 to Election Integrity Group Over FOIA Practices

A Michigan county has been penalized $10,000 for slow-walking a response to a FOI request by an election watchdog group.

Patrick Colbeck, a former state senator, an aerospace engineer, and a poll challenger, sits down for an interview in Detroit, Mich., on Nov. 27, 2020. Bowen Xiao/The Epoch Times

It took over one year of wrangling and a lawsuit, but the Michigan Grassroots Alliance (MGA), an election integrity watchdog group, has gotten what it sought—a segment of video surveillance tape that may serve as evidence in an investigation of the handling of voting results on election night in 2022 by some county election officials.

In a properly functioning Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, obtaining the tape should have taken about two weeks. Instead, it took nearly 13 months.