ELECTION INTEGRITYSwing States Prepare for a Showdown Over Certifying Votes in November
There is widespread concern in Michigan and Wisconsin over interference in finalizing election results. Despite the checks and balances built into the voting system, members of state and county boards tasked with certifying elections will be driven by conspiracy theories and refuse to fulfill their roles if former President Donald Trump loses again.
Clairene Jorella was furious.
In the northern stretches of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, the Crawford County Board of Canvassers had just opened its meeting to certify the August primary when Jorella, 83 years old and one of two Democrats on the panel, laid into her Republican counterparts.
Glaring, she said she was gobsmacked by the partisan opinions they’d recently aired publicly.
“We are an impartial board,” she told them a day after the primary election, sitting at a conference room table in the back of the county clerk’s office. “We are expected to be impartial. We are not expected to bring our political beliefs into this board.”
The two Republicans, Brett Krouse and Bryce Metcalfe, had two weeks earlier written a letter to the editor of the local newspaper, endorsing a candidate for township clerk because of “her commitment to election integrity.”
Citing their positions on the Board of Canvassers, the letter went on to claim that because of new state election laws, including one that allows for early voting, “All of the ingredients required for voter fraud were present.”
Jorella thought the letter was inappropriate. And she had reason to worry, having seen in recent years Republican members of county boards in Michigan and in other states refuse to certify elections when their preferred candidate lost. It was a preview of the battles communities nationwide might face in November’s presidential election.
Metcalfe, 48, said he didn’t do anything wrong.
“I don’t serve the Democrat Party in any way, shape or form,” he said. “I serve the Republican Party.”
“Bryce, you serve the people,” said Brian Chace, 77, the board’s other Democratic member.
Metcalfe raised his voice. “I will not be silenced.”
The board members argued for 20 minutes, then broke into two bipartisan teams to begin their task at hand. In a process known as canvassing, they looked through documents precinct by precinct, making sure that the total votes shown on a polling place’s ballot tabulator matched the number of ballots issued.
While members of the board eventually certified the election after meeting a few times over the following week, the kerfuffle illustrates the tension consuming communities around the country over one of the crucial final steps in elections.
Stateline crisscrossed Michigan and Wisconsin — two states critical in the race for the presidency — to interview dozens of voters, local election officials and activists to understand how the voting, tabulation and certification processes could be disrupted in November.
