William Bailey of Central Lake Township is again accusing Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson of is withholding records she’s been ordered to turn over as part of an ongoing election fraud lawsuit in Antrim County.
This has become a theme in the lawsuit filed by Bailey in November alleging election fraud in Antrim County and potentially across the state.
Both sides say the other isn’t providing information or access to witnesses for depositions. Bailey’s attorney, Matthew S. DePerno, claims he can’t prepare witnesses for deposition until he has all of the election information from Benson’s office.
Attorneys for Benson have said they’ve provided nearly everything requested, but DePerno now alleges a report Benson’s office publicly released on March 26 proves that’s not true.
In a Friday court filing that asks Antrim County Circuit Judge Kevin Elsenheimer to extend the discovery window, DePerno said the 54-page report in question “clearly relies on information previously requested” but not yet disclosed.
Bailey’s lawsuit focuses largely on Dominion Voting Systems tabulation machines and software that initially reported incorrect unofficial elections results in Antrim County, indicating former President Donald Trump lost the Republican-leaning county.
It was later determined by county and state officials that the mistakes were caused by human error, rather than any intentional software deficiencies or fraud as the lawsuit alludes.
The report produced by J. Alex Halderman, a computer security and systems specialist and professor at the University of Michigan, entitled “Analysis of the Antrim County, Michigan November 2020 Election Incident”, takes a deeper look at the cited reasons for the errors.
“The explanations provided by the county [and the Department of State are correct that the inaccurate unofficial results were a consequence of human errors, but the problems were somewhat more complicated than initially understood,” Halderman wrote. “The human errors that initiated the incident were compounded by gaps in election procedures and their adherence.
“The election software also could have done more to help election staff avoid making mistakes that could lead to erroneous results.”
Halderman said local clerks proofed ballot design on Sept. 5 and updated the voting machines countywide, basically giving the tabulators instructions via removeable flash storage drives on how to record and report the votes.
Then, a trustee candidate joined a race in the village of Mancelona, a millage proposal was added in Warner Township and a Village of Central Lake School Board race typo was corrected.
When Election Source, the company that provides software for Dominion Voting Systems, provided the updated flash drives, the county should have updated all of the election machines at the county and local level. Instead, Halderman said only machines in the three precincts with changes were updated.
“This would prove to be a consequential mistake,” Halderman writes.
This led to miscommunication and unofficial election night results that showed now-President Joe Biden beating former President Donald Trump, 7,769 to 4,509, results that baffled many.
“County staff, who finished generating the initial unofficial results at 4 a.m. on election night, apparently did not review them closely enough to detect the obvious discrepancies before publishing them,” Halderman said. “A few hours later, Antrim learned that the initial results were erroneous and took them down. Staff manually entered results from the poll tapes for the affected scanners, and the county published revised unofficial results on November 5.
“However, county staff neglected to remove some of the inaccurate data that had been loaded from the memory cards, so the reported totals in some precincts were the sum of the corrected and erroneous results. The county took down the results again to correct this.”
Halderman said a subsequent hand recount showed totals “support the conclusion that there were no significant errors in Antrim County’s final presidential results.”
Ultimately, Trump won Antrim County, 9,748 to 5,960. Halderman said the software could be improved to alert election officials when certain inconsistencies occur, such as a ballot change that hasn’t been updated in all county election systems.
Halderman’s report is a rebuttal to a previous election analysis conducted by Allied Security Operations Group, a Dallas-based cyber-security company with Republican ties that was hired by Bailey to analyze Antrim County’s results in December. That disputed report said Dominion Voting Systems software and machines are “intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results.”
Halderman’s report rebuts many of the Allied Security Operations Group findings.
Attorneys for both sides in the lawsuit are expected to return to court on April 12, when the judge will sort out a long list of growing differences, mostly related to fulfilling requests for depositions and information exchange.
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He analyzed the processes and
The report disputes a number of claims contained in another election analysis report conducted by Allied Security Operations Group, a Dallas-based cyber-security company with Republican ties that was hired by Bailey to analyze
Bailey’s legal team
“On Friday, March 26, 2021, defendant Secretary
and is questioning the honesty of Secretate now questioning the Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who Bailey claims is withholding records and data
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