A Michigan judge dismissed one of the few remaining election fraud cases in the country yesterday despite major developments in the case over the last several weeks. The dismissal also comes days after the office of the lead attorney in the case, Matt DePerno, was broken into.
DePerno and his team of experts had recently uncovered several startling facts about the way voting machines and tabulators used in Antrim County, Michigan, on Election Day worked.
Two weeks ago for example, one of the experts, Jeffrey Lenberg, demonstrated how vote counts could be manipulated using software embedded on the voting machines without being detected.
The following week it was shown there were over 1,000 phantom ballots cast in Antrim County in the November 3 election. A phantom ballot is a ballot used by a voter who is otherwise not legally able to vote. Examples include ballots cast by voters who have moved, do not have legal addresses or are deceased.
Additionally, it shown that 20% of all ballots mailed prior to the election in Antrim County were sent to P.O. boxes. P.O. boxes cannot be used as valid addresses at which to receive a mail-in ballots in the U.S.
During a press conference on Monday DePerno and his client plaintiff Bill Bailey revealed the discovery duplicate ballots cast in the election. Startlingly, they also revealed the ability to back date tabulator tapes, the official receipts generated by voting machines showing election results.
“It’s unbelievable that you can actually do that,” DePerno told ITN yesterday. “That was a remarkable discovery.”
“Why would a voting machine need to have that capability,” I asked. “Well, it doesn’t. There’s no reason for any of these functions,” DePerno responded.
Thirteenth Circuit Court Judge Kevin Elsenheimer made a point of saying that his dismissal was not a judgement on the evidence, but rather a determination on the Secretary of State’s authority to review elections. He deemed that authority to be nearly absolute.
“What he’s saying is he’s not making a decision today based on the data. He’s making it solely on the issue of whether a voter has the Constitutional right to audit an election. And he said, yes, you do, but it’s totally up to the Secretary of State to determine what an audit looks like,” DePerno said.
Interestingly, Elsenheimer noted that despite numerous claims made by Michigan state officials to the contrary, no audit of election results had taken place in Antrim County.
Elsenheimer’s decision yesterday comes just four days after DePerno’s Michigan office was broken into Friday night.
“Someone broke into our back door and came into the office and apparently stole nothing,” DePerno said. “They didn’t take anything. None of the computers, nothing was damaged. Nothing at all. It’s all there. So, who does that?”
“We swept for bugs and didn’t find anything. But it’s just a very weird thing coming at this time.”
DePerno was adamant that Elsenheimer’s decision was not the end of his team’s investigation. “We’ll appeal it,” he said.