Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Audit shows result was right in Michigan, where Trump's crusade still fuels distrust

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson

"Now it's up to every leader to acknowledge that truth," Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said upon releasing the results of a final audit confirming Joe Biden's victory.

Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

It's taken four months, but the most comprehensive election audit in battleground Michigan's history is over. The bottom line: The certified presidential results were almost precisely correct, so President Biden undoubtedly deserved the 16 electoral votes he got.

The announcement Tuesday was not only a coda on one of the most intense battles in former President Donald Trump's war on democracy. It also was the prelude to efforts by the state's politically divided power structure to boost faith in the system with improvements in time for 2022.

Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said she would press the Republican-majority Legislature to require similarly extensive auditing of future statewide elections before the results are finalized. Last fall several lawsuits by Trump allies demanding such audits were rejected by courts.


Michigan was one of the focal points of Trump's efforts to reverse his defeat with lies designed to sow doubt about the result, especially the credibility of absentee vote totals, and his crusade gained alarming traction when GOP election officials balked at certifying the results in Detroit. The federal transition process was permitted to get started, with the formal recognition of Biden as the "apparent winner," only after the normally obscure Board of State Canvassers reversed course three weeks after Election Day and voted 3-0 to lock down the result.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Biden took the state by a clearcut 154,000 votes, a victory margin of 3 points. It was his most decisive victory in the five states that he took from Trump's 2016 win column. That result was affirmed by a statewide "risk-limiting audit" in which more than 18,000 randomly selected ballots from more than 1,300 jurisdictions were reviewed by local clerks.

The audits examined an equal number of ballots cast by mail and by machine, because the method for casting the 2.8 million votes statewide was almost exactly split. Among the findings was that the potential error in tabulating the absentee ballots Wayne County, which takes in Detroit, totaled 17 out of 174,000 submitted.

Polls nonetheless have shown that most Republicans in the state, and nationally, continue to profess distrust in the election results — and Trump continues to assert without any credible evidence that he was the rightful winner.

The audit result should eradicate "any rationale for continuing to question the integrity of the election and the validity of the outcome," Benson said. "Now it's up to every leader to acknowledge that truth."

While momentum is growing for newly restrictive voting rules in the GOP-run legislatures of several other hard-fought 2020 states — Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona most notably — Benson and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a fellow Democrat, are hoping to forge narrow compromises to preserve some of the election easements created last year because of the pandemic.

One proposal would allow the processing of mailed ballot envelopes to begin well before Election Day so that tabulating could get started soon after the polls closed. The record surge of absentee votes, and the prohibition on opening the envelopes and verifying signatures before Nov. 2, led to delays in results that fueled much of the misinformation and distrust in the process.

Read More

Business professional watching stocks go down.
Getty Images, Bartolome Ozonas

The White House Is Booming, the Boardroom Is Panicking

The Confidence Collapse

Consumer confidence is plummeting—and that was before the latest Wall Street selloffs.

Keep ReadingShow less
Drain—More Than Fight—Authoritarianism and Censorship
Getty Images, Mykyta Ivanov

Drain—More Than Fight—Authoritarianism and Censorship

The current approaches to proactively counteracting authoritarianism and censorship fall into two main categories, which we call “fighting” and “Constitution-defending.” While Constitution-defending in particular has some value, this article advocates for a third major method: draining interest in authoritarianism and censorship.

“Draining” refers to sapping interest in these extreme possibilities of authoritarianism and censorship. In practical terms, it comes from reducing an overblown sense of threat of fellow Americans across the political spectrum. When there is less to fear about each other, there is less desire for authoritarianism or censorship.

Keep ReadingShow less
"Vote" pin.
Getty Images, William Whitehurst

Most Americans’ Votes Don’t Matter in Deciding Elections

New research from the Unite America Institute confirms a stark reality: Most ballots cast in American elections don’t matter in deciding the outcome. In 2024, just 14% of eligible voters cast a meaningful vote that actually influenced the outcome of a U.S. House race. For state house races, on average across all 50 states, just 13% cast meaningful votes.

“Too many Americans have no real say in their democracy,” said Unite America Executive Director Nick Troiano. “Every voter deserves a ballot that not only counts, but that truly matters. We should demand better than ‘elections in name only.’”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hands outside of bars.
Getty Images, stevanovicigor

Double Standard: Investing in Animal Redemption While Ignoring Human Rehabilitation

America and countries abroad have mastered the art of taming wild animals—training the most vicious killers, honing killer instincts, and even domesticating animals born for the hunt. Wild animals in this country receive extensive resources to facilitate their reintegration into society.

Americans spent more than $150 billion on their pets in 2024, with an estimated spending projection of $200 million by 2030. Millions of dollars are poured into shelters, rehabilitation programs, and veterinary care, as shown by industry statistics on animal welfare spending. Television ads and commercials plead for their adoption. Stray animal hotlines operate 24/7, ensuring immediate rescue services. Pet parks, relief stations in airports, and pageant shows showcase animals as celebrities.

Keep ReadingShow less