Wayne County, Michigan’s Circuit Judge Timothy Kenny has newly denied a Republican demand for an audit of election results in Wayne County, which includes Detroit, prior to the scheduled electoral college vote on Monday. The Republican plaintiffs in the case, including local elected official Cheryl Costantino and Edward McCall, Jr., had requested an audit by the Wayne County Clerk, but Judge Kenny concluded that election audit responsibilities belong to the office of Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D). Furthermore, he added, Kenny did not find any support in the state law for the plaintiffs’ demands for the completion of the audit prior to the upcoming electoral college vote.
🚨BREAKING: Michigan Court DENIES Republican request for Wayne County audit.
Trump and his allies remain 1-49 in post election litigation.https://t.co/PR0ZBwO61E
— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) December 8, 2020
The plaintiffs had previously sought an independent audit prior to the certification of local election results, which has now taken place. In this case, Judge Kenny noted that the “Court failed to find any legal authority permitting the Court to approve Plaintiffs’ motion for the Wayne County Clerk to implement an audit of the Wayne County election results.” Furthermore, Kenny added that the “Court could not find any statutory mandate for the commencement date of the audit” that is already provided for by state rules.
Costantino and McCall based their demand for an audit on an allegation “that election workers at downtown Detroit’s TCF Center processed and counted ballots from voters whose names were not listed in the qualified voter file and used random names from the list when a voter’s name could not be confirmed,” in the description of Courthouse News, but their claims are “not grounded in fact” and “not grounded in logic,” Detroit city attorney David Fink recently insisted. Costantino and McCall’s claims mirror claims from Trump allies elsewhere in the country — Rudy Giuliani himself recently alleged that, at one point in the aftermath of Election Day, a truck delivered 100,000 “phony” ballots to a Detroit-area ballot tabulation center. Trump allies have failed to produce substantive evidence of their claims of widespread election fraud anywhere in the country, and they have concurrently failed to come remotely close to overturning the election outcome in a single state anywhere in the country.
Trump has challenged election results outside of the courtroom. He has personally spoken with officials in Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, trying to garner support for his fight against the election results. His efforts have failed to produce meaningful action.
