Update: The Dead Vote In Michigan – Voter Database Being Modified

This is an update to the article I wrote called: The Dead Vote in Michigan. Since writing the article, there have been several updates.

Update: Trump Lawsuit in Detroit

There has been an update to the lawsuit(s) described below, specifically the one presented by Great Lakes Justice Center. The Judges Opinion & Findings (note: a Judge appointed by Trump) indicated the case lacked sufficient evidence and misconstrued events. The choice quote:

Perhaps if Plaintiffs’ election challenger affiants had attended the October 29, 2020 walk-through of the TCF Center ballot counting location, questions and concerns could have been answered in advance of Election. Regrettably, they did not and, and therefore, Plaintiffs’ affiants did not have a full understanding of the TCF absent ballot tabulation process. No formal challenges were filed. However, sinister, fraudulent motives were ascribed to the process and the City of Detroit. Plaintiffs’ interpretation of events is incorrect and not credible.

Having read the reasoning it sounds fair. I personally question the accuracy of the underlying voter database. The process needs a major overhaul, there is a possible avenue to pursue regarding challenging the system. That is an audit by the Secretary of State in Michigan (which was mentioned in the judges ruling). Personally, I believe this is the best course of action as the system is poorly managed, at best. There were hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of ballots sent to people dead or had inaccurate data in the database.

Original Article

A lawsuit was filed by Great Lakes Justice Center, with multiple signed affidavits claiming voter fraud. There were two affidavits I found particular interesting. The first by Robert Cushman starting on page 46 of the lawsuit:

Note, in the prior article (The Dead Vote in Michigan) there were a number of people with said birthday (or near said birthday?). I was able to confirm the following names:

• Robert Brock, January 1900, 48203
• June Aiken, August 1900, 49201
• Terry Mathis January 1900, 48207
• Donna Brydges January 1901, 49431
• William Bradley, March 1902, 48207

At the time, it was possible to view: Donna Brydges January 1901, 49431. Their birth date was not 1900. Below is a video checking said information.

Per the Beatrice Dupy at the Associated Press, who is a “Fact Check Reporter” – Donna Brydges is alive and has a real birth date of June 1945. Assuming the AP did call, I’m still not sure how voter validation was done or how a database for voter validation didn’t have a birth date.

(See counter argument section below)

Given the information above, I went back to check it out myself…

Michigan is Updating the Voter Database

It appears the voting system used by Michigan suddenly had data corrected and started working!

While this doesn’t seem unreasonable to fix an error in the database. That also means the evidence has disappeared.

Now I cannot find the previous entry for June Aiken, August 1900, 49201.

However, their record was still in various websites:

June Aiken has the 1900 record.

Although that record was missing, I was still able to view Robert Brock, January 1900, 48203

I was also able to view Terry Mathis January 1900, 48207.

Independent Verification

One important aspect to all of this was independently verifying one could find people myself in the database. Michigan itself appears to have around 10 million residents and 7.3 million can vote[1]. Thus far, I have found thousands of voting records with 1900 as the date. Several (as above) have voted, there is also the question if records have been deleted.

Below is a video showing several additional 1900 voting records, including one that voted. All of them are currently unchallenged per michiganresidentdatabase.com

Below are 30 other ones you can manually check yourself: https://vote.michigan.gov/Voter/index

First Name	Last Name	Birth Month	Birth Year	Zipcode
Jimmie	Shephard	January	1900	48238
Cornelius	Johnson	January	1900	48202
Arretta	Williams	January	1900	48202
Claborne	Ferguson	January	1900	48234
Carlton	Frilot	January	1900	48234
Lammie	Frilot	January	1900	48234
Nebraska	Marsh	January	1900	48203
Edmund	Boniecki	January	1900	48121
Cleo	Adams	January	1900	48206
Selma	Lawhorn	January	1900	48238
Terrance	Black	January	1900	48202
John	Atkinson	January	1900	48235
Dora	Pallister	January	1900	48203
Florence	Gibson	January	1900	48202
Francine	Lee	January	1900	48208
Henrietta	Toney	January	1900	48202
Hattie	Bryant	January	1900	48202
James	Bradley	January	1900	48234
Helen	Miller	January	1900	48203
Mary	Silacki	January	1900	48234
Ben	Givens	January	1900	48206
Daniel	Beattie	January	1900	48214
Allie	Wilson	January	1900	48207
Maryann	Kozub	January	1900	48214
Parker	Reid	January	1900	48235
Derek	Shirley	January	1900	48202
Rochelle	Jones	January	1900	48207
Sajohny	Walker	January	1900	48211
Gentle	Washington	January	1900	48207
Vivian	Walker	June	1911	48219
Geneva	Fulton	January	1900	48221

For a much much larger list VoterRecords.com has a list of many voters (though not all voters and many historic voters).

Search voter records in Detroit, Michigan with a Birth date Before 1930

Search voter records in Michigan with a Birth Date Before 1930

Hundreds of 1900 birth year entries were reviewed and there were a few who indeed voted by mail (perhaps more in person). However, to reiterate — This apparent error in the database was discovered November 5th, at the latest. It is now November 13, 2020 and I have shown the database is being updated. I am not 100% sure how many have been updated at this point.

Shared by Bots

What I find striking about this whole thing, is how completely fishy the accounts that “highlighted” this data were. All of these names came from random sources, which honestly look like bots. Everything from Shaquille O’atmeal

There’s also this random person with the user handle @Argie speaking Spanish & claiming fraud. Not 100% sure I believe this account (also created in 2017), but the image below shows the official voter database with dates of birth as 01/01/2020.

Closing Thoughts

I’ve received a lot of heat of late. I’ve shared what I’m seeing, not necessarily claiming it’s true. Personally, I find the most likely theory that there is something strange going on. However, I am not convinced who is the actor at play, there is always some fraud. Additionally, I think the Michigan Government changing the database at this point (before an investigation) is a little bit more suspicious.

The most concerning thing to me isn’t actually any of the above. The most concerning to me, is it appears the tabulation machines were internet connected. Below is from an affidavit int he lawsuit listed above:

While there’s a potential bias, there are multiple witnesses claimed. In addition, it appears someone named Patrick Colbeck. If it is the same person, Patrick Colbeck is a former state senator (Republican, so potentially bias)[2]. Given the above, I believe it’s quite possible for that to be true. Which would enable the entire Michigan system to be hacked. Hopefully, it was not, but we may never know.

In any case, my goal here was to update on the current status of Michigan’s vote challenges. I’m not particularly fond of either candidate, but believe voting integrity is of supreme importance.

EDIT: Counter Arguments

Per a comment on my Hacker News submission, I was directed to: bridgemi.com. From the arcicle:

… there were two William Bradleys in the Qualified Voter File registered at the same address in Detroit, according to the Department of State. It appears a local elections worker incorrectly recorded an absentee ballot cast by the younger Bradley as one cast by the elder, an error that has since been corrected.

“The most likely explanation is that a ballot submitted by the 1959 Bradley was accidentally recorded as being received from the 1902 Bradley,” said Wimmer, a spokesperson for the Department of State.

Also in the article there are explanations for June Aiken, who police apparently met and Donna Brydges. Claiming there were issues with the Qualified Voter Database (you don’t say…).My question… how did the secretary of states office (which issue drivers licenses) not have everyone’s birth date (nor decide to update the system).

From the article:

The errors don’t prove fraud, but they do point to flaws in the state’s Qualified Voter File.  As of this summer, a Bridge review showed there were more than 16,000 people listed in the database with a birth date of 1920 or earlier, including Gabriel Konowich of Flint, born in 1892; he died before 2010, according to a sibling’s obituary.

Konowich was among a series of dead Michiganders who received an absentee voter application this year, fueling speculation that Benson’s push for mail-in voting could open the door to fraud.

Benson, a Democrat who mailed the applications en masse, has argued that returned mail actually can help Michigan clean up its records by alerting clerks of change of address or other life circumstances.

Rebuttal – Why the Lawsuit Still has Teeth

Although I’m not pro-Trump by any means, I do think the lawsuit does have merit. From an earlier article by the same author, there have been a lot of issues in the past:

Voting problems have cropped up over the years, and in Southfield in 2019, city clerk  Sherikia L. Hawkins was charged with altering 193 voter records following the November, 2018, election. Hawkins faces six felonies.

And in Wayne County, there have been numerous problems with elections, from missing ballots to accusations of sloppy elections and bloated voter rolls.

In 2017, one year before being elected lieutenant governor, Garlin Gilchrist II sought a recount in his loss to Janice Winfrey, Detroit’s clerk, citing accounts of residents showing up to polls and being told they’d already cast absentee ballots.

A year earlier, Michigan’s recount of the presidential election was halted because of numerous irregularities in Detroit. A state audit found no evidence of “pervasive fraud” and blamed the problems on a “multitude of human errors.”

Part of the claims laid out in Trump’s Lawsuit in Michigan is that they mailed out ballots to every “valid” voter, which is hundreds of thousands of dead people. Then proper procedures were not followed to validate and secure those ballots. Some of those people cast ballots (potentially not maliciously), the challenge is there wasn’t (as everyone admits) a good voter validation system. All the errors above are occurring because there is no reasonable verification on mail-in ballots.

Personally, I believe Trump’s lawsuit has less teeth than the signed affidavits by the Great Lakes Justice Center, but we shall see. I also don’t believe either will be exceptionally successful challenges. However, hopefully the system can be improved.

Voter Verification in Michigan

As a reference, below is the statute for voter verification in Michigan:

(1) Upon receipt from the city or township clerk of any envelope containing the marked ballot or ballots of an absent voter, the board of inspectors of election shall verify the legality of the vote by doing both of the following:

(a) Examining the digitized signature for the absent voter included in the qualified voter file under section 509q or the registration record as provided in subsection (2) to see that the person has not voted in person, that he or she is a registered voter, and that the signature on the statement agrees with the signature on the registration record.

(b) Examining the statement of the voter to see that it is properly executed.

(2) The qualified voter file must be used to determine the genuineness of a signature on an envelope containing an absent voter ballot. Signature comparisons must be made with the digitized signature in the qualified voter file. If the qualified voter file does not contain a digitized signature of an elector, or is not accessible to the clerk, the city or township clerk shall compare the signature appearing on an envelope containing an absent voter ballot to the signature contained on the master card.

On a normal year, a voter as to request a ballot. This year, ballots were mailed to all “registered voters”. All that was required was filling it out, signing it and mailing it. It is not clear how effective signature matching is and importantly, is much less strict than the Michigan statutes if you vote in person:

You will be asked to show ID when you check in to vote. If you don’t have one, you can still vote.

If this happens, expect a poll worker to ask you to sign a form before you vote that explains you didn’t have an ID. Your ballot will be included with all others and counted on Election Day.

ID types you can use to check in are:

• • Michigan driver’s license or state ID
  • Driver’s license or personal identification card issued by another state
  • Federal or state government-issued photo identification
  • U.S. passport
  • Military ID with photo
  • Student identification with photo from a high school or accredited institution of higher learning
  • Tribal identification card with photo

If the current lawsuit fails, I suspect Trump’s argument will be that there is a “two tiered voting system”, similar to the arguments in Pennsylvania. Again, not claiming anything about merit, only that it follows logically.