A guest post by Becky Behrends, M.D. and Vice President of Research for Michigan Citizens for Election Integrity (MC4EI.com)
(100percentFedUp.com) Here we go again! Now the race card is being played against Republican Secretary of State candidate Kristina Karamo by the reliably unreliable media and the leftist groups like the NAACP they serve over the lawsuit she filed against Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey.
Karamo, with help from black female lawyer Alexandria Taylor, has filed a last-minute lawsuit against the City of Detroit, alleging improper and illegal practices with regard to the handling of absentee ballots.
Attorney Alexandria Taylor, Plaintiff and GOP SOS candidate and former poll challenger Kristina Karamo, and Plaintiff Patricia Farmer, a lifelong Detroit resident.
Specifically, the lawsuit calls for halting the “use of absentee ballots that are obtained without proper identification of the voter.” The suit calls into question the use of Relia-Vote machines which are used to verify signatures on ballots but which are not endorsed or provided for by Michigan election law. There has been no public transparency as to how these machines are used in signature verification. Do they automatically check signatures? If so, what is the sensitivity threshold for determining what a signature is? If not properly specified, a stray mark could be construed as “a signature.” Or are the signatures subject to “visual inspection” by election workers? Is there a public accuracy test for these machines with bipartisan assessment?
The whole issue of signature verification of absentee ballots exploded in the 2020 general election when a judge ruled that Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson violated the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) with her signature verification guidance to clerks. She instructed them to “presume” absentee ballot signatures were valid if they had “redeeming qualities”. Judge Christopher Murray said .” Nowhere in the state’s election law has the Legislature indicated that signatures are to be presumed valid….Policy determinations like the one at issue- which places a thumb on the scale in favor of a signature’s validity- should be made pursuant to properly promulgated rules under the APA.” This requires months of public notices, drafts, public comments, and hearings. This was not done.
In addition, the lawsuit calls into question accepting absentee ballots that were deposited via drop boxes that were not effectively monitored.
What is “effective monitoring”? If surveillance videos are not being observed in real-time, is that “effective”? It has been acknowledged that the drop box videos in the Detroit 2020 election were not monitored in real-time. Are surveillance videos considered “effective” if they sit on the shelves of legislators for over a year with no viewing of their contents? It took a third party (private citizen) to insist that these videos needed to be examined. Secretary of State Benson and Attorney General Dana Nessel have not investigated the findings of those who reviewed these videos, so they are not in a position to say that illegal activity or fraud was not committed. The burden of proof should be on them.
MI Democrat SOS Jocelyn Benson and MI Democrat AG Dana Nessel
It seems entirely appropriate that these issues should be debated, investigated, and even litigated.
But, the kicker in this lawsuit was the charge that the lawsuit represents “blatant racism” reminiscent of the Jim Crow era in which black citizens were disenfranchised. And in the nation’s largest majority-black city. Why pick on Detroit was their outcry? “Why not Petoskey, Mi?” the judge asked.
