Michigan expands its investigation into Trump allies’ tampering with the voting system  

• In the last six weeks, state police in Michigan have obtained warrants to seize voting equipment and election-related records in at least three towns and one county, according to police records, expanding the largest known investigation into unauthorised attempts to access voting systems by allies of former President Donald Trump.
• Search warrants and investigators’ memoranda obtained by Reuters through public records requests are among the previously undisclosed documents.
• The documents show a frenzy of activity by state officials to secure voting machines, vote books, data storage devices, and phone records as evidence in a probe that began in mid-February.

In the last six weeks, state police in Michigan have obtained warrants to seize voting equipment and election-related records in at least three towns and one county, according to police records, expanding the largest known investigation into unauthorised attempts to access voting systems by allies of former President Donald Trump.

Search warrants and investigators’ memoranda obtained by Reuters through public records requests are among the previously undisclosed documents. The documents show a frenzy of activity by state officials to secure voting machines, vote books, data storage devices, and phone records as evidence in a probe that began in mid-February.

The probe comes after Republican leaders and pro-Trump activists in Michigan hacked local election systems in an attempt to verify Trump’s unfounded allegations of rampant fraud in the 2020 election.

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The state is probing a possible compromise of voting equipment in Lake Township, a small, predominantly conservative hamlet in northern Michigan’s Missaukee County, according to the police records. The incident is one of at least 17 around the country, including 11 in Michigan, in which Trump supporters got or attempted to gain unauthorised access to voting equipment.

Many of the hacks were sparked in part by the bogus claim that state-mandated voting-system updates or maintenance in 2020 would wipe proof of alleged voter fraud. Officials from state election commissions, including those in Michigan, claim that these procedures have no bearing on the preservation of election data from previous elections.

The search warrants also authorized state police to seize election equipment in Barry County’s Irving Township and have it examined. Local officials acknowledged publicly last month that state police raided the township office on April 29, a day after the warrant was issued.

Additionally, the records shed new light on election-equipment breaches in Roscommon County. One official in the county’s Richfield Township told investigators that he gave two vote-counting tabulators to an unauthorized and unidentified “third party,” who kept them for several weeks in early 2021. The county’s clerk acknowledged that she, too, handed over her equipment to unauthorized people.

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