(Lansing, MI – November 27, 2020) – Early on Thanksgiving morning, the American Freedom Law Center, along with associated counsel acting as special counsel for the Thomas More Society based in Chicago, filed a Petition for Extraordinary Writs and Declaratory Relief in the Michigan Supreme Court on behalf of two Michigan voters.
The two voters are members of Black Voices for Trump, and they have been disenfranchised and aggrieved by the determination of the Board of State Canvassers of Michigan to certify the 2020 general election without conducting a full audit and investigation into the numerous (and substantiated) allegations of voter fraud and other serious voting irregularities.
The petition and associated brief set forth and substantiate with evidence numerous instances of election malfeasance at the TCF Center in Detroit and throughout Wayne County, the most populous county in the State, and they demonstrate how Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s “vote by mail” scheme not only violated the U.S. Constitution by directly violating the absentee ballot law passed by the Michigan Legislature, but that it precipitated the fraud at the TCF Center and throughout the State.
As argued in the brief, practices that promote the casting of illegal or unreliable ballots, or fail to contain basic minimum guarantees against such conduct, such as the Secretary of State’s absentee ballot scheme and the procedures employed at the TCF Center and elsewhere, violate the rights to due process and equal protection under the U.S. and Michigan Constitutions by leading to the dilution of validly cast ballots.
As the U.S. Supreme Court has stated, “[T]he right of suffrage can be denied by a debasement or dilution of the weight of a citizen’s vote just as effectively as by wholly prohibiting the free exercise of the franchise.” The Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses protect the right to vote from conduct by state officials which seriously undermines the fundamental fairness of the electoral process.
As set forth in the petition:
In Michigan, the Secretary of State, Jocelyn Benson, a registered Democrat, acting unilaterally and without legislative approval, flooded the electoral process for the 2020 general election with absentee ballots. The Secretary of State accomplished this partisan scheme by unilaterally sending absentee ballot request forms to every household in Michigan with a registered voter (no matter if the voter was still alive or lived at that address) and to non-registered voters who were temporarily living in Michigan or who were not United States citizens.
The petition names as respondents Jocelyn Benson in her official capacity as Secretary of State, Jeannette Bradshaw in her official capacity as Chair of the Board of State Canvassers for Michigan, the board of State Canvassers, and Gretchen Whitmer in her official capacity as Governor of Michigan.
AFLC Co-Founder and Senior Counsel Robert Muise commented:
“Fair and honest elections are the lifeblood of our constitutional republic. American citizens, including those of us who reside in Michigan, demand and deserve honest, fair, and transparent elections. We demand and deserve a process that ensures that our legal votes will count and that illegal votes will not. Indeed, the U.S. and Michigan Constitutions require it, and for good reason, as demonstrated in our petition and associated brief. As the evidence shows, the election in Michigan failed to meet this standard. At the end of the day, this case seeks to restore the purity and integrity of elections in Michigan so that ‘We the people’ can have confidence in their outcome and thus confidence that those who govern are doing so legitimately.”
CASE UPDATE (December 6, 2020): We filed our reply brief in support of our petition.
CASE UPDATE (December 9, 2020): The Michigan Supreme Court denied our petition 4-3.
Petition for Extraordinary Writs (1)--Filed