US President Donald Trump has stepped up his attack on Michigan's voting machines, claiming they showed a 68 percent error rate and that the state's Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, may have broken the law.
68% error rate in Michigan Voting Machines. Should be, by law, a tiny percentage of one percent. Did Michigan Secretary of State break the law? Stay tuned!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 15, 2020
"Tremendous problems being found with voting machines. They are so far off it is ridiculous. Able to take a landslide victory and reduce it to a tight loss. This is not what the USA is all about. Law enforcement shielding machines," Trump wrote, in reference to his earlier claims about systemic irregularities in battleground states turning his election night leads into losses.
Tremendous problems being found with voting machines. They are so far off it is ridiculous. Able to take a landslide victory and reduce it to a tight loss. This is not what the USA is all about. Law enforcement shielding machines. DO NOT TAMPER, a crime. Much more to come!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 15, 2020
Trump's Michigan remarks come right after the release of a redacted court-ordered forensic audit of Dominion voting machines used in Michegan’s Antrim County. The report, compiled by Texas-based cybersecurity firm Allied Security Operations Group, showed a 68 percent error rate in the tabulation of votes, far above the 0.0008 percent error allowance accepted by the Federal Election Commission.
The report also alleged that the error rate was a "feature," not a bug of the systems, with Dominion machines apparently "intentionally and purposefully made with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results."
State authorities and Dominion Voting Systems dismissed the report's findings. Secretary of State Benson and Attorney General Dana Nessel issued a joint statement, calling the audit "another in a long stream of misguided, vague and dubious assertions designed to erode public confidence in the November election" and suggesting that the company tasked with carrying it out had no experience "in election administration and technology."
Michigan's electors formally gave Democratic candidate Joe Biden the state's 16 Electoral College votes on Monday, helping him secure a solid victory with 302 electoral votes to Trump's 232.
The latest blow to the Trump campaign came on Friday, when the Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit by Texas accusing Michigan, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin of violating their own state legislatures' statutes on election rules related to insecure mail-in ballots. SCOTUS threw out the Lonestar State's case, stating it had failed to show "a judicially cognisable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections," a polite way of saying it's none of Texas’ business.
