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A Michigan judge dismissed a lawsuit from President Donald Trump's campaign demanding a stop to the voting and counting process and requesting "meaningful access" to poll challengers because, she said, Michigan's ballots have already mostly been counted and that there is no legal basis to grant the requests.
Michigan Court of Claims Judge Cynthia Stephens, an appointee of Governor Jennifer Granholm, dismissed the Trump campaign's case against Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson on Thursday.
The Trump campaign also presented an affidavit saying a local election official said he was told by a poll worker that she had been instructed to change the receipt date on a ballot to reflect that it had actually been received on Election Day. Stephens dismissed the incident as "hearsay" and questioned how it was relevant to the lawsuit, according to the Detroit Free Press.
The Trump campaign also requested surveillance video of Michigan's ballot drop-boxes. While Michigan law requires outdoor ballot drop boxes to be monitored by camera, the law only applies to drop boxes installed after Oct. 1, and the state is not required to keep track of which drop boxes were installed after that date or to provide access to the video.
Republican poll watchers were already allowed access to the counting process, but that decision is up to local election officials, who were not listed in the complaint.
A similar case was dismissed in Georgia.
As Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, told ProPublica, "A lawsuit without provable facts showing a statutory or constitutional violation is just a tweet with a filing fee."
Maybe Trump should just stick to Twitter.
As of Thursday, Joe Biden had more than 150,000 votes than Trump in Michigan. Several states are still counting their ballots, with Biden closer to the necessary 270 electoral college votes than Trump.
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About The Author
Lee DeVito
Leyland “Lee” DeVito is the editor in chief of Detroit Metro Times since 2016. His writing has also been published in CREEM, VICE, In These Times, and New City. He once asked porn star Stormy Daniels to spank him with an issue of Metro Times. She obliged.
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