Michigan accidents spur spread of misleading election claims

In the closely watched battleground state of Michigan, election officials are under the microscope, isolated mistakes or missteps serving as fodder for election deniers to fuel widespread doubt about the election’s results.

Several incidents this week — from an isolated case of an illegal vote being cast to human errors in the secretary of state’s office that have since been corrected — have shown how out of character conspiracy theorists have tried to suggest that something far more sinister is afoot .

“For those of us who run elections, it’s a stressful time anyway, and we’re really worried about this situation and these kinds of stories getting out of hand,” said Washtenaw County Clerk Democrat Lawrence Kestenbaum. “Psychologically, having people challenging the process and so on is stressful.”

Despite extensive transparency efforts and attempts to quickly correct the situation for the Michigan public, the incidents have already been amplified online to suggest systemic cheating and election fraud, making it difficult to recognize the original misleading claims.

“Canary in the Coal Mine”

While Michigan got off to a smooth and strong start to its early statewide in-person voting this week, the state also faced several incidents that indicate how easily small cases can be amplified on social media to suggest the opposite.

On Wednesday morning, confusion over the number of ballots cast in the state was sparked by a formatting error that has since been corrected, with no additional votes counted, according to the Michigan Secretary of State’s office.

Part of the confusion seems to have come from a post on X by Matthew DePerno, one of Michigan’s leading election deniers. A former GOP nominee for Michigan attorney general, DePerno was CHARGED last year in connection with efforts in 2020 to illegally access and tamper with voting machines in hopes of proving the election was stolen from Donald Trump. DePerno has pleaded not guilty in the voting machine case.

DePerno’s post, which has been viewed more than six million times, said his review of Michigan’s “Qualified Voter File” — a database of voter records that tracks ballot submissions — showed that a voter ID registered a vote dozens of times at different addresses. DePerno added that the spreadsheet data shows more than 160,000 excess ballots.

Michigan’s secretary of state attributed the confusion to a “formatting error” in the spreadsheet he says has been corrected, which mistakenly appeared to show the same vote assigned to former addresses associated with a person.

“Each of these voters had only one registered vote for this election. This error in the data export process has been corrected and these erroneous additional rows no longer appear in the report,” the statement said.

Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump also sought to clarify the allegations in a post on X saying “there was an error in the system – these duplicates were not and WILL NOT BE COUNTED.” Her acknowledgment that this was an error and did not indicate widespread fraud supported explanations from Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat.

Asked about clarification from Trump and the secretary of state’s office, DePerno told CNN: “If you think this is an export issue, then you’re a fool.”

DePerno’s dubbing, despite the explanation and correction, underscores the difficulty of assuaging the doubts sown by those who spread the claims on social media to allege wrongdoing.

“The explanation has much less coverage than the original claim … when you compare the level of coverage from government officials, it’s impossible for the information to catch up with the viral claims,” ​​said Ben Decker, CEO of threat intelligence group Memetica. “These are sort of the canaries in the coal mine of post-Election Day disinformation narratives.”

Far-right conspiracy website The Gateway Pundit also appeared to reject official explanations and referred to the incident as a “voting scandal” in a headline on Thursday morning.

“Bless Lara’s heart, but this is not acceptable and probably inaccurate,” The Gateway Pundit wrote in response to her assurance that the issue had been resolved.

Rare case of non-citizen voting

As DePerno’s claims circulated on social media, authorities announced that Michigan prosecutors had charged a Chinese national with voter fraud and perjury after he allegedly voted in the 2024 election.

Sources familiar with the matter told CNN that the 19-year-old Chinese man who allegedly voted is a student who lives in Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan. Authorities said the man is not a U.S. citizen and therefore cannot vote in federal elections.

Experts say illegal voting by non-citizens is extremely rare, and when it does happen, it is usually caught quickly. The announcement by Michigan’s secretary of state and attorney general, both Democrats, and local prosecutors in Ann Arbor emphasized the isolated nature of the case.

“Investigations in several states and at the national level have found no evidence that large numbers of non-citizens have registered to vote. Even less common is a non-citizen who actually votes. When it happens, we take it extremely seriously,” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Washtenaw County District Attorney Eli Savit said in a statement.

It appears that the student’s vote cannot be canceled later and will be counted because the ballots cannot be retrieved after they have gone through the tabulator. Unlike voting by mail, ballots issued at in-person polling places do not contain any identifying information about the individual voter, making it impossible to determine which student it belongs to, County Clerk Kestenbaum told CNN.

Experts said this is meant to maintain the secrecy of the vote and is standard election procedure. The case is still under investigation and it is unclear which candidates the student voted for.

“A personal ballot is placed in a tabulator or ballot box, mixed with other ballots. This is to preserve secrecy so you can’t go into the ballot later and confirm who a particular priest voted for,” said David Becker, a former Justice Department voting rights official and founder of The nonpartisan Center for Innovation and Electoral Research.

Investigations are underway to determine whether the incident may have been an accident or part of a foreign plot to undermine the integrity of US elections. The Chinese man — a student at the University of Michigan — cast his ballot on Sunday and then contacted local election officials later that day in an attempt to get his ballot back, according to a source familiar with the situation.

Benson returns to claiming the Dominion

Also this week, right-wing social media accounts started runing Benson’s remarks at a press conference Monday, during which he claimed there was a “national problem” with some Dominion specialized machines that would make it more difficult for voters with disabilities in Michigan to split their ticket and vote for candidates from different parties.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk, who has relentlessly shared potential misinformation about the election on his account, promoted Benson’s comments in a post on X, asking Dominion “what’s going on” with the cars. The post, which included a video of Benson’s remarks, has been viewed more than 42 million times.

As conspiracy theories about Dominion’s voting assistance devices (VADs) began to spread, the company reprimanded Benson, accusing her of making “false and misleading” comments about alleged problems with its accessible machines voters with disabilities.

“The Michigan Department of State has confirmed that there is no issue preventing voters from making their preferred selections and voting by paper,” Dominion said in a statement.

The voting technology company said it doesn’t have machines in any other state that offer straight party-line voting “like the state of Michigan does,” arguing that it’s not actually a nationwide problem, as Benson claimed.

Benson later retracted his remarks, saying through a spokesperson, “Dominion has explained that the VAT scheduling error only affects users in Michigan.”

Accidents and issues involving Dominion machines often catch fire on social media — as many pro-Trump personalities still promote the lie that Dominion machines were involved in rigging the 2020 election in President Joe Biden’s favor. A controversial right-wing sheriff in Barry County, Michigan, who also lied about Dominion’s holdings in 2020, POSTED on X this week about a “criminal investigation” he’s conducting into the company.

Despite the recent challenges, Michigan election officials say they are confident they are prepared to withstand efforts to undermine confidence in the results.

“We’re used to scrutiny — everyone thinks they’re an election expert,” Kestenbaum said. “I don’t spend a lot of time on worst-case scenarios … you can imagine things kind of descending into chaos. I don’t think that will happen, and I think that the official, legal, bipartisan process that we have will prevail over attempts to disrupt or undermine it.”

CNN’s Kylie Atwood contributed to this report.

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