With some 95 percent of the expected vote reported, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden led in the critical swing state of Michigan by a little over 60,000 votes. In a state where millions upon millions of votes were cast during this election cycle, the margin is thin — but it’s enough to hand Biden the state, if maintained. (Donald Trump himself won Michigan by an even thinner margin in 2016.) On Wednesday, the Trump campaign filed a lawsuit seeking to stop ballot-counting across the state until they were given the ballot-counting observation access that they wanted. On Wednesday, in Detroit, Republicans also began seeming to physically harass election workers. Video emerged of a small group of the president’s backers congregating inside a ballot-counting facility and chanting “Stop the count!”
When a major political party is running on a de facto strategy of marching around in a ballot-processing facility and chanting demands to “stop the count,” there is a serious problem. Check out footage from one of the strikingly chaotic scenes below. At one point, the Republicans even started banging on windows! Their behavior seems despicably deranged.
Poll challengers have started chanting something and circling a particular table. With @BridgeDet313 pic.twitter.com/US2Bhyt37H
— Bisma Parvez (@BismaPar) November 4, 2020
#TCFCENTER: From the inside, the heavy thudding of rhythmic banging against the glass after the boxes were taken down.
Chanting is echoing in the hall.
Inside: Workers are quietly, diligently counting. @NBCNews pic.twitter.com/IQZd6wKWiF
— Steve Patterson (@PattersonNBC) November 4, 2020
Another reporter in Detroit said that cops “have now been called in to the Detroit counting room to try and protect the doors.” How despicable is it that due to the belligerent strong-arm tactics of a particular political party, police officers have to be summoned to help keep the peace at a ballot-counting facility? That second Detroit reporter, Ray Wert, said that the angry Republicans gathered outside of that facility eventually began chanting “Let us in!” A different person who was present in Detroit had previously noted that Michigan Republicans swamped a Detroit ballot-counting room with their own party’s operatives to the point that Democratic lawyers couldn’t even get in.
Check out footage from the outrageous scenes in Detroit below:
Here too. Can confirm. Police have now been called in to the Detroit counting room to try and protect the doors. Feels like the fake GOP “riots” in Florida in 2000. https://t.co/2eBltkP70w pic.twitter.com/1ZX095w4N4
— Ray Wert (@raywert) November 4, 2020
Now the GOP operatives here are chanting “let us in” while workers are trying to count ballots. pic.twitter.com/YctgyTbmyk
— Ray Wert (@raywert) November 4, 2020
Notably, the belligerent behavior from the Republican operatives in Detroit hearkens back to comments from the president himself. During the first presidential debate, Trump said that he was “urging” his supporters “to go in to the polls and watch very carefully, because that’s what has to happen.” Although ballot-counting stations are obviously distinct from polling places, the point remains that Trump has peddled baseless conspiracy theories insisting that there’s some kind of Democratic plot to steal the election. In the wake of Election Day, he has pushed these same theories, claiming that late changes to vote tallies are somehow automatically suspicious. In fact — valid ballots are getting counted! There’s no conspiracy. It’s democracy.
