Matthew S. DePerno ~ RICO and County Election officials?
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In July 2020, counties across the state of Michigan received a FOIA from Michigan Election Reform Alliance asking for “scanned digital ballot images.”
This was similar to a FOIA sent in 2016.
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Many county clerks engaged in a multi-layered discussion of how to respond, which included copying the Michigan Bureau of Elections on the discussion.
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The counties appear to have understood that disclosure was required under Opinion No. 7247
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Many counties also acknowledged that the best way to avoid disclosure of ballot images was to turn off ballot imaging at the tabulator.
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From Justin Roebuck, Ottawa County Clerk . . . lol (so funny)
There is a legal process for reviewing ballots after the election - and that is called a recount. We now also have audit process in place - but I don't believe that just any person or entity is entitled to view ballot images on demand. Anyway - that will be part of our responce - lol :)
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From Ann Marie Main, Presque Isle County Clerk (“NO RECORDS”)
We don't utilize or keep the images…and since the cards are reformatted …the answer may be simple. NO RECORDS.
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From Caroline Wilson, Shiawassee County (same)
Shiawassee County has the same answer as Ann Marie - NO RECORDS.
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Machines take an image of the ballot that is submitted and then tabulate the votes based on the ballot image. 52 USC 20701 requires that all election records must be maintained for 22 months.
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But Michigan counties appear to have collectively decided (with SOS copied on the emails) to not retain ballot images produced by machines. The default settings store the images, which means they manually disabled the image store feature.
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I ask you, was a crime committed and does RICO apply?
https://twitter.com/mdeperno/status/1393403111469899777