By Frank Bergman
A large citizen-led election integrity investigation into Detroit’s 2020 election is claiming it has uncovered major irregularities involving absentee ballots, missing envelopes and questionable voter records.
The investigation is reportedly being led by New Jersey resident Yehuda Miller, Check My Vote founder Phani Mantravadi and Patty McMurray of The Gateway Pundit.
According to the report, more than 100 volunteers are now reviewing nearly one million election-related documents obtained from Detroit and Wayne County through a lengthy Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) legal battle.
Investigators claim thousands of ballots lacked required envelopes
One of the investigation’s major claims concerns absentee ballots cast from taxpayer-funded housing facilities in Detroit.
After reviewing records tied to 51 subsidized housing units, investigators say they found that 12.4% of mail-in ballot votes reviewed were incomplete because no matching ballot envelope could be located.
Michigan law requires absentee ballots to be returned inside official signed envelopes before they can legally be counted.
The investigators argue ballots without corresponding envelopes should have been deemed invalid.
“So what happened to all of the missing absentee envelopes, and who counted all of the ballots knowing they were legally required?” the investigators asked in a public release.
The volunteer team reportedly matched absentee voter records against official mail-in ballot envelopes obtained through Miller’s FOIA lawsuit against Detroit.
According to the report, the review process involved manually cross-checking large volumes of ballot data and election records.
Nearly one million documents under review
The investigation has reportedly become one of the largest privately organized election record reviews in the United States.
Investigators claim Detroit officials resisted turning over the documents for years and that many records arrived disorganized and out of sequence.
Mantravadi reportedly developed a custom digital platform to organize more than 155,000 absentee ballot envelopes by counting board so volunteers could manually review records for anomalies.
The report states volunteers have been spending up to 12 hours per day reviewing and cross-checking records before findings are publicly released.
Investigators highlight alleged irregularities
The report outlines multiple examples investigators claim raise concerns about Detroit’s 2020 election handling.
Examples cited include:
- A voter allegedly registered and voted from what investigators described as a nonexistent Detroit address
- Ballots with signatures dated after the city’s recorded “received” timestamp
- Envelopes allegedly processed despite missing signatures or dates
- A ballot mailed from Germany and allegedly received the same day it was signed overseas
- Ballots tied to overseas UOCAVA voting rules investigators claim are vulnerable to abuse
- Envelopes containing multiple conflicting timestamp markings
- Ballots where mailing labels were scribbled out
- Ballots allegedly issued despite being marked “rejected”
The investigators also revisited claims involving what they call “ghost votes.”
These allegedly involve ballots where write-in candidate ovals were filled in but no accompanying candidate names were entered.
The report claims more than 10,000 ballots displayed that pattern, potentially triggering manual adjudication procedures.
Questions raised over election oversight
The investigation also raises questions regarding the actions of Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey and former Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson during the 2020 election.
The report references earlier criticism directed at Benson after millions of unsolicited absentee ballot applications were mailed statewide during the pandemic-era election.
Investigators argue the expansion of mass mail-in voting weakened chain-of-custody safeguards while local officials allegedly failed to properly enforce signature verification and envelope requirements.
The review also revisits prior controversies involving late-night ballot deliveries at Detroit’s TCF Center and allegations connected to the GBI Strategies voter registration scandal.
Investigation ongoing
The volunteer group says it plans to continue releasing findings as the remaining hundreds of thousands of documents are reviewed.
According to the report, investigators deliberately chose not to hand the project over to government agencies or outside organizations due to concerns evidence could be ignored or buried.
“The future of our elections hangs in the balance,” the group wrote.
“We can no longer afford to look the other way.”
Source: Slay News / The Gateway Pundit