By Randy Schiffer | October 28, 2024
What exactly happens in Detroit during presidential elections? This question looms as large as an 800-pound gorilla in the room…and for good reason. Wayne County, home to Detroit, is the largest of Michigan’s counties and accounts for about 15% of the state’s total votes. Election after election, issues and irregularities plague the county’s ballot-counting processes.
One issue that clouds Wayne County is itw consistent lagging behind the other 82 counties in publishing its official election vote tallies. Recorded ballot counts in 72% of Detroit's absentee voting precincts—and almost half of all Detroit's precincts were out of balance during the 2020 election, meaning the number of voters did not match the number of ballots cast. Specifically, the number of ballots tracked in precinct poll books did not match the number of ballots counted. Meanwhile, the vast majority of other Michigan counties reported in-balance results. Most counties, if out of balance by so much as one ballot, undergo canvasser review until the issue is remedied and the voter-ballot count is brought into balance.
Why the discrepancy?
An MFE team of investigators is narrowing its focus onto Detroit, hoping to uncover answers.
Population size is not the issue
Michigan’s elections are divided into equal-sized precincts consisting of “5,000 [or fewer] active registered electors in the city, ward, township, or village.” The state provides equal funding to staff and administer each election in each precinct. The more precincts; the more funding and staffing. Size does not matter.
Rude awakening
Michiganders went to sleep on Election Day, Nov. 3, 2020, assuming the election was finished. Incumbent President Donald J. Trump was more than 100,000 votes ahead with what experts believed was an insurmountable lead.
People woke to a surprise. For the first time in the nation’s history, vote counting had stopped in the early morning hours after Election Day. Then statistically implausible vote spikes swung the outcome of Michigan’s election in favor of Joe Biden.
As people were scratching their heads wondering how this could have happened, images of a City of Detroit delivery van dropping off ballots to the TCF Center surfaced, and the timing coincided with the Biden vote spikes.
Figure 1. Late Night Ballot Delivery at the TCF Center
in the Early Morning of November 4, 2020. Source: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/feb/14/detroit-ballot-van-simply-working-late-on-election/
Christopher Thomas, lead Detroit elections consultant and 40-year veteran of Michigan’s Bureau of Elections, allayed suspicions, saying, “It is only logical to expect that the delivery and counting would last beyond Nov. 3.”
Conservative and liberal publications alike dismissed the van "conspiracy" concerns.
But four years earlier in 2016, with only about 60,000 total absentee ballots, the TCF Center did not finish tabulations until 2:30 a.m. With 174,000 ballots, the task took until 8 p.m. on Nov. 4. This was Thomas’s explanation as to why a van was still delivering ballots at 3:24 a.m., even though ballot acceptance had stopped at 8 p.m. on Nov. 3.
These ballots came from somewhere, but to date, their originating location has yet to be determined.
Skeptics point to a fenced-in warehouse located near Detroit’s Huntington Place. The “Detroit Warehouse,” whose namesake is the corrupt “Chicago Warehouse,” known for its manufacture and distribution of fake ballots in the 1800s. The facility is situated only a few blocks from the Wayne County Absentee Vote Counting Board (AVCB) at Huntington Place, formerly known as TCF and Cobo Hall.
As shown in Figure 2 below, the Detroit Warehouse is located across the street from a printing press called Detroit Legal News, doing business as the Inland Press. For simplicity, this article refers to this business by its incorporated name, the Detroit Legal News or DLN.
Figure 2. Detroit Map
The Detroit Legal News has contracts with Ingham County and possibly other large counties in Michigan. According to DLN’s website, the company publishes legal news for Detroit, Jackson, Grand Rapids, and Muskegon, plus counties Macomb, Oakland, Genesee, Ingham, and Washtenaw.
Ingham County has contracted DLN printing press services three different times. The 2019, 2020, and 2022 resolutions in which Ingham County approved funding for election printing materials with Detroit Legal News are displayed in Figure 3 below.
Figure 3. Ingham County Resolutions
Pictures of the Detroit Warehouse and Detroit Legal News are displayed in Figure 4 below.
Figure 4. Detroit Legal News (doing business as Inland Press) and the Detroit Warehouse
Exactly how many Michigan counties have ballot printing contracts with Detroit Legal News, aka Inland Press, is unknown. But, a January 2021 documentary publication indicates the DLN printed ballots for the 2020 election (p. 224).
Citizen investigator Bob Cushman and other citizen investigators allege that the Detroit Department of Elections rents the Detroit Warehouse during election season (p. 209). They claim that Michigan billionaire Dan Gilbert, owner of more than 90 properties in the Detroit area, owns or has owned the Detroit Warehouse. According to the Cushman et al report, Gilbert used the facility as a storage garage called the Lafayette Garage after its street address (see p. 210).
Figure 5 below illustrates the investigation’s hypothetical ballot distribution diagram with the Detroit Legal News as the originating source and epicenter of the ballots.
Figure 5. Hypothetical map. Delivery and Distribution of Ballots in Michigan
The yellow circle and arrow illustrate police investigations that discovered about 8,000 to 10,000 registration applications containing numerous suspected fraudulent applications delivered to a clerk in Muskegon in October 2020. The registrations were seemingly mailed from a motel in Auburn Hills, but the originating source of these registrations remains unclear. Could the Detroit Legal News have printed these registrations?
If many of the big counties in Michigan have ballot printing election contracts with the same DLN printer, then DLN is likely the most critical ballot printing press in the state. A couple of law enforcement offices are situated within a few miles of this printing press as shown in Figure 2 above.
Thanks to Dinesh DeSousa’s 2000 Mules film, there are video records aired of ballot mules stuffing drop boxes in Michigan in 2020. Evidence suggests that non-government organizations (NGOs) served as hubs providing the mules with ballots. If true, the Detroit Warehouse would be conveniently located and equipped to insert unauthorized ballots into the stream.
Seeking answers to haunting questions
A number of questions remain to be answered:
Are ballots being delivered from across the street to this warehouse directly from the originating ballot printing press? Is there a highly sophisticated, coordinated scheme involving NGOs and mules to stuff drop boxes across Michigan?
Did the late-night ballot deliveries to the TCF Center from November 2020 originate from this Detroit Warehouse?
Why is the entire Michigan law enforcement apparatus so quiet on this nationally important issue? What is the status of the Muskegon voter registration fraud investigation?
What you can do.
If you would like to help investigate the Detroit Warehouse between now and a week after the election, write to Randy at contact@mifairelections.org. And, on November 5, Election Day, join the Detroit Warehouse Watch Party (see flyer below).
To sign up as a paid poll worker or volunteer poll challenger, go to https://www.pureintegritymichiganelections.org.
Help mark the end of the registration and polling lines at 8 p.m. on Election Day by contacting Amber at contact@mifairelections.org.
Attend local political meetings, city council meetings, and election integrity group meetings.
Randy Schiffer is an electrical engineer, a USAF veteran and an election integrity advocate with a focus on Michigan. He has studied election irregularities extensively with a focus on Michigan for three-plus years and has worked with a number of election integrity groups, including Check My Vote and Michigan Fair Elections. GETTR: @RandySchiffer | Truth Social: @RandySchiffer | Twitter / X: @RandySchiffer
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