Bob Nelson was so surprised by what he saw that he began snapping photos with his phone.
City of Detroit workers were unloading numerous “hay bale-sized” bundles of used absentee ballot envelopes at a dump on the city’s east side at McNichols near Mt. Elliott on Dec. 6.
Thousands of envelopes containing the names, addresses, and signatures of voters spilled out in front of Nelson, a handyman and author who lives in Highland Park.
Nelson was also at the dump, dropping off debris for his boss, who owns property in the city. When he began taking photos, he said a city worker told him not to.
“He said, ‘You can’t take pictures. There are no photographs allowed,’” Nelson tells Metro Times. “I said, ‘I don’t see any signs that no photographs are allowed.’ He said they have cameras, and if they see me, they will ban me for life. I did delete three of the pictures. He shook my hand and bummed a cigarette off me.”
While the ballot envelopes are two years old, and elections officials say all the votes inside were properly counted at that time, Nelson believes the city should burn or shred the documents because they could be used for identity theft.
“I want someone to hold these cocksuckers accountable because it’s wrong,” Nelson says. “It’s helping people commit identity theft.”
Nelson adds that he believes the handling of the ballot envelopes erodes faith in the election system.
“How can we trust the integrity of the election when they do dumb shit like this? It’s wrong,” Nelson says. “I just want people to know this is how their tax dollars are being used. It’s incompetent.”
Daniel Baxter, the administrator of Detroit’s elections, insists the city did nothing wrong and says the envelopes were empty. He adds that all of the information on the envelopes are public records that are subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
“A person can ask for a list of everyone who has voted in any given election or can go to that particular pile of envelopes and gather that particular information,” Baxter tells Metro Times. “In terms of voter privacy, there is no information about how they voted. It just says they voted in a given election.”
The envelopes are from elections in 2021.
Baxter says the city is required to retain the records for two years and then it can dispose of them.
Subscribe to Metro Times newsletters.
Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter
