• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Events
  • Civic Ed
  • Campaign Finance
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • Independent Voter News
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Voting>
  3. vote counting>

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

David Hawkings
March 03, 2021
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.

From Your Site Articles
  • Report warns that election hacking is still a major concern - The ... ›
  • Efforts to grow turnout may delay election results - The Fulcrum ›
  • Swing states build protections around 2020 elections - The Fulcrum ›
  • Michigan rolls the dice with risk-limiting audit system - The Fulcrum ›
  • Federal court stops GOP effort to preserver power - The Fulcrum ›
  • Trump allies eye top election official spots in key states - The Fulcrum ›
  • Trump allies eye top election official spots in key states - The Fulcrum ›
  • Report: Fair elections face threats in battleground states - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • Michigan Begins Biggest Election Audit in The U.S. - 9 & 10 News ›
  • Post-Election Audit Manual ›
  • Michigan election audit affirms Nov. presidential results, Benson says ›
vote counting

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

Reform in 2023: Leadership worth celebrating

Layla Zaidane

Two technology balancing acts

Dave Anderson

Reform in 2023: It’s time for the civil rights community to embrace independent voters

Jeremy Gruber

Congress’ fix to presidential votes lights the way for broader election reform

Kevin Johnson

Democrats and Republicans want the status quo, but we need to move Forward

Christine Todd Whitman

Reform in 2023: Building a beacon of hope in Boston

Henry Santana
Jerren Chang
latest News

Podcast: Deepening democracy in the states

Our Staff
27 January

Ask Joe: Fostering social activism

Joe Weston
27 January

With an eye on 2024, some states consider new protections for election workers

Barbara Rodriguez, The 19th
27 January

The crook and the fumbler

Lawrence Goldstone
26 January

Pragmatism is the way forward

Dave Anderson
26 January

Podcast: How the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack impacted politics

Our Staff
26 January
Videos

Video: We need more bipartisan commitment to democracy: Pennsylvania governor

Our Staff

Video: Meet the citizen activists championing primary reform

Our Staff

Video: Veterans for Political Innovation - Who we are

Our Staff

Video: Want to fight polarization? Take a vacation!

Our Staff

Video: Kevin McCarthy is Speaker, but he's got a tough job ahead

Our Staff

Video: #ListenFirst Friday End of Year

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Deepening democracy in the states

Our Staff
27 January

Podcast: How the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack impacted politics

Our Staff
26 January

Podcast: Why we misunderstand independent voters

Our Staff
25 January

Podcast: What does the House Speaker election say about the Republican Party?

Our Staff
24 January
Recommended
Video: We need more bipartisan commitment to democracy: Pennsylvania governor

Video: We need more bipartisan commitment to democracy: Pennsylvania governor

Podcast: Deepening democracy in the states

Podcast: Deepening democracy in the states

Podcasts
Ask Joe: Fostering social activism

Ask Joe: Fostering social activism

Pop Culture
With an eye on 2024, some states consider new protections for election workers

With an eye on 2024, some states consider new protections for election workers

Elections
The crook and the fumbler

The crook and the fumbler

Elections
Pragmatism is the way forward

Pragmatism is the way forward

Big Picture