Trump pushes his new favorite lie about voting machines — in county he won

Donald Trump on Tuesday tweeted yet another false claim about voting machines, just one day after it was debunked by election officials and less than 24 hours after the Electoral College cemented Joe Biden’s presidency.

“68% error rate in Michigan Voting Machines. Should be, by law, a tiny percentage of one percent. Did Michigan Secretary of State break the law? Stay tuned!” Trump wrote.

The claim appeared to stem from a new 23-page report by Allied Security Operations Group, which has put out previous false claims on the election before, the Detroit News noted on Monday.

The report claimed that Dominion Voting Systems, a company frequently targeted by Trump, had “intentionally and purposefully designed” its electronic voting machines, which were used in the Nov. 3 election in several states, “with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results.”

The group also claimed it discovered a 68% “error rate” in the tabulation log of Michigan’s Antrim County server, but as the Detroit News wrote, it was unclear how the group drew its conclusions or what the “error rate” data actually referred to.

As the outlet noted, Antrim County is “reliably Republican.” Trump won the rural region by more than 3,700 votes in the Nov. 3 election.

Top Michigan officials, including Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Attorney General Dana Nessel, elections director Jonathan Brater, and Dominion and Antrim County Clerk Sheryl Guy, pushed back on the Allied report Monday.

In a joint statement, Benson and Nessel said the report was “another in a long stream of misguided, vague and dubious assertions designed to erode public confidence in the November presidential election.”

“If the Trump campaign had any actual evidence of wrongdoing — or genuine suspicion thereof — they could have requested a hand recount of every ballot in the state. They did not, instead choosing to allow shadowy organizations claiming expertise to throw around baseless claims of fraud […],” Benson said.

Allied Security Operations Group does not have a credible record. Previously, the group used incorrect data in its claim that there were six precincts with over 120% turnout in Michigan’s election, citing public turnout figures, the Detroit News reported. That claim was incorrect, and final certified data on the election proved as much.

Since his election defeat, Trump has launched a deluge of attacks, without evidence, against voting machines, using it as one of several reasons for his loss. He has parroted many of the same lies that have been debunked time and again by both election officials and his own administration.

Notably, Trump’s latest attack comes on the heels of the Electoral College officially casting votes on Monday to formalize Biden’s victory.

“Tremendous evidence pouring in on voter fraud. There has never been anything like this in our Country!” he wrote in a mid-morning tweet on Tuesday, without offering any proof to back that claim.

And on Monday, he suggested the Allied report would result in a huge shift in the election results, hinting that he would somehow remain president for a second term.

“Election changing result!” he tweeted.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.