‘Ship has sailed,’ federal judge says while denying Republican request to block Michigan election results

Michigan Trump Republicans protest outside of the TCF Center in Detroit

Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump protest outside the TCF Center in Detroit on Friday, Nov. 6, 2020.Nicole Hester/Mlive.com

A federal judge on Monday rejected an emergency request to block Michigan election officials from submitting certified election results to the Electoral College.

“This case represents well the phrase: ‘this ship has sailed,’” U.S. District Judge Linda V. Parker said in her dismissal. “The time has passed to provide most of the relief (the plaintiffs) request in their amended complaint; the remaining relief is beyond the power of any court. For those reasons, this matter is moot.”

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan by a group of Republican voters and poll workers on Nov. 25, cited an array of claims, including a “systemic adaptation of old-fashioned ballot-stuffing,” in its request to stop Michigan officials from fling its certified election with the Electoral College until there is a full investigation or possible revote.

“Plaintiffs ask this court to ignore the orderly statutory scheme established to challenge elections and to ignore the will of millions of voters,” Parker, a President Barack Obama appointee, wrote. “This, the court cannot, and will not, do.

“The people have spoken.”

In response to the ruling, Novi-based Attorney Gregory Rohl, who is representing the plaintiffs, said he fully expects the election issues to come before the Supreme Court.

“With the successful in-roads being made by some of the related filings I will be meeting with my team to decide on whether to appeal this ‘cut-and-paste’ ruling which never addressed a single piece of the voluminous evidence submitted with our complaint filing,” Rohl said. “I am personally prepared to proceed forward and all voters can count on our dedicated commitment to ensure the integrity of our democratic process against corruption in any form.”

Much of the lawsuit focused on alleged fraud in Detroit, where the lawsuit claims, based on witnesses who provided signed affidavits, that election managers told workers to backdate absentee ballots so they could be counted, to manually enter ballots submitted by unregistered voters, and had workers count ballots without signatures.

“The scheme and artifice to defraud was for the purpose of illegally and fraudulently manipulating the vote count to manufacture an election of Joe Biden as president of the United States,” the lawsuit said. “The fraud was executed by many means, but the most fundamentally troubling, insidious, and egregious ploy was the systemic adaptation of old-fashioned ‘ballot-stuffing.’

“It has now been amplified and rendered virtually invisible by computer software created and run by domestic and foreign actors for that very purpose.”

Canvassers have reviewed and certified Michigan’s statewide and county elections. Several court cases and fact check has determined there is no evidence of widespread fraud that would have likely impacted the result of the election which President Donald Trump lost by more than 150,000 votes. Michigan’s electoral college representatives meet Dec. 14 — by law the state’s 16 electoral votes will be cast for Biden.

Related: How Detroit became a central scapegoat of ‘stop the steal’ crusade

While the lawsuit focuses most intensely on “egregious” election fraud in Detroit, the results in overwhelmingly Democratic voting Detroit, where nearly 80% of the residents are Black, were similar to past elections.

In fact, Trump actually gained ground in Detroit this election, compared to 2016. The increase in Detroit support, however, was negligible and not enough to save the election. Trump received 5%, or 12,654 votes on Nov. 3, versus 3%, or 7,682 votes, in 2016.

Proving extensive voter fraud in Detroit, which has dealt at times with corruption and sloppy governance in recent decades, was perhaps the last real shot Trump had to win Michigan’s 2020 general election.

The plaintiffs sought court action that Judge Parker called, “stunning in its scope and breathtaking in its reach,” that would “disenfranchise the votes of the more than 5.5 million Michigan citizens who, with dignity, hope, and a promise of a voice, participated in the 2020 General Election.”

The judge notes that there are remedies in place to challenge election results without invalidating legitimate votes.

While the emergency request to halt transfer of Michigan election results to the Electoral College failed, a final ruling on the greater lawsuit remains pending.

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