Election Workers Call Police on Volunteers, Using COVID as the Excuse, at Michigan State House District Recount
Shane Trejo
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The pattern of Democrats using thuggish behavior to harass and intimidate whistleblowers continued during the recount for Michigan’s 71st District House seat.
State representative candidate Gina Johnsen called for the recount because she believes it is necessary for improving the flawed electoral process. However, electoral officials in Eaton County apparently do not support transparency and made it difficult for poll watchers and challengers to exercise their rights and supervise the process.
Johnsen told Big League Politics that she gained four votes and her opponent lost one vote during the two-day hand recount that her campaign requested and paid for. She is pleased that the process exposed corruption as poll workers and election officials yet again fabricated nonexistent COVID protocol to disenfranchise whistleblowers.
“I pushed the point that there’s no reason why I couldn’t have volunteers in there with medical exemptions. I had 15 face shields with me yesterday, and all the volunteers were all turned away. They made their own rules against the state directives,” Johnsen said of the poll workers in attendance.
“I just wanted one guy in there this morning, my data guy, who couldn’t wear a mask. He could wear a face shield, but they wouldn’t let him in. They made up extra rules beyond what was mandated by the Governor, the Secretary of State, MDHHS, to stop volunteers from viewing the process,” she added.
Police were eventually called when Johnsen refused to acquiesce to these violations of her volunteers’ basic rights. They said they would have to issue a citation for not wearing a mask as well as trespassing. Johnsen explained that she and volunteers were abiding by state law. Johnsen noted that the officers were very polite after hearing her explanation. After the data guy left, the police dropped the citations, and there were no further problems.
Johnsen and other volunteers interviewed by Big League Politics reported experiencing a great deal of hostility from Democrats throughout the process. Republican volunteers said they were left out in the cold on the first day of the recount before chairs were brought into the facility on day two. They also discovered that the trailer delivering the ballots was not locked. They were told by electoral officials that the trailer was locked but it was not. Anyone could have accessed the ballots and tampered with them for at least three hours.
State representative-elect Stephen Carra of Three Rivers sued the state of Michigan before the election so that COVID-19 could not be used as an excuse to disenfranchise poll challengers. Although he was successful in changing the state directives, the state has seemingly ignored their own policies at every turn in order to keep their corrupt electoral process intact.
“We had to peer through shower curtains, wear these masks, and couldn’t hear anything. It was frustrating to say the least to get through all of these barriers that were created arbitrarily because of COVID-19,” Carra told Big League Politics.
He noted that plastic barriers were used to separate poll workers processing ballots from challengers. The opaqueness of the barriers made it very difficult for challengers and watchers to properly observe the process.
“Those plastic screens were an impediment for the ability to properly see the ballots. I couldn’t read Gina’s name, and there were times where they would move quickly and I couldn’t observe the process,” Carra noted.
He did not feel there was any systemic fraud taking place in Eaton County, although he did observe rules being broken throughout the process.
“They seemed like honest and well-intentioned errors from what I experienced, but it was difficult to see through the sheet. It was like looking into water,” Carra said.
“We need to be able to find these errors that really do happen frequently in the process,” Carra added, defending lawsuits and recounts as being necessary to police the electoral system.
Big League Politics will follow up with additional news regarding the recount and any potential legal fallout relating from whistleblowers’ rights being violated while ballots were being processed.
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