President Donald J. Trump disembarks Marine One at Valley International Airport in Harlingen, Texas, Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2021, to board Air Force One for his return flight to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland. (Official White House photo by Shealah Craighead)
A judge in Michigan has ruled a Democrat state official violated the law by issuing orders during the 2020 presidential election ballot counting that clerks must assume a signature on an absentee ballot is valid.
The decision changed no election results, but is a startling development for those who brought many of the lawsuits over the 2020 counting processes who claimed that state officials skewed the results by various administrative orders and decisions.
Those orders, multiple cases argued, were invalid because the U.S. Constitution specifically gives to state legislatures the authority to establish the framework for elections in states.
Multiple cases argued that such administrative orders, many of them addressing absentee ballots which are more subject to fraud that in-person voting, created a bias in the process.
Additionally, still not fully explained from the 2020 election are a multitude of vote dumps, sometimes of tens or hundreds of thousands of mostly absentee ballots, sometimes almost exclusively for Joe Biden, during dark-of-the-night hours and sometimes after poll watchers had been told to go home.
Such evidence prompted President Trump's charges that the election was stolen. Michigan, in fact, was cited in several legal challenges as one state where those developments happened.
In the Michigan case, Judge Christopher Murray of the Michigan Court of Appeals has ruled that Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson broke state law by demanding that ballot counters presume that a signature on a ballot was valid.
"The stated purpose of the at-issue document was to 'provide[ ] standards' for reviewing signatures, verifying signatures, and curing missing or mismatched signatures. Under a heading entitled 'Procedures for Signature Verification,' the document stated that signature review 'begins with the presumption that' the signature on an absent voter ballot application or envelope is valid. Further, the form instructs clerks to, if there are 'any redeeming qualities in the [absent voter]application or return envelope signature as compared to the signature on file, treat the signature as valid.' … 'Redeeming qualities' are described as including, but not being limited to, 'similar distinctive flourishes,' and 'more matching features than nonmatching features.' Signatures 'should be considered questionable' the guidance explained, only if they differ 'in multiple, significant and obvious respects from the signature on file.' … '[W]henever possible,' election officials were to resolve '[s]light dissimilarities” in favor of finding that the voter’s signature was valid," the judge wrote.
The state's requirements are that voters who choose to vote absentee must sign an application for the ballot, and then sign the return envelope when they return the vote.
Signatures that do not "agree sufficiently" "are to be rejected," under state law.
Benson, the judge ruled, "should not have issued the orders and, in doing so, violated the state's Administrative Procedures Act," according to constitutional expert Jonathan Turley.
He described this very dispute as "a core issue raised by the Trump campaign in its election challenges."
Most of those challenges were dismissed by a long list of judges on grounds that never addressed the significant issues that were raised. One case, brought by Texas and more than a dozen other states, was rejected even by the Supreme Court on the grounds that election fraud in a national election in one state wouldn't impact the valid votes in another state where there was no fraud.
The court found, Turley explained, that the instructions on the signature-matching requirements amounted to a "rule" and were subject to the requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act, which Benson ignored.
She ordered that "clerks should presume that a voter's application or envelope signature is his or her genuine signature," even though there may be "an apparent mismatch."
Benson even offered "hypothetical explanations for why signatures on absent voter ballot applications and absent voter ballots might not be an exact match," the judge wrote.
The judge pointed out that the instructions apparently still are in effect, for future elections, because it "was not limited to the then-upcoming November 2020 general election, nor has it been rescinded."
The state had contended that the election was over so the case was over. Officials also argued that Benson could change the instructions, so the case would be moot.
But the judge noted, "Those issues concern the validity of guidance that is still in effect … or an audit … that, according to the plain text … may be requested after the election has occurred."
And the judge explained, "Nowhere in this state's election law has the legislature indicated that signatures are to be presumed valid, nor did the legislature require that signatures are to be accepted so long as there are any redeeming qualities in the application or return envelope signature as compared with the signature on file.
"Here, defendant issued a mandatory directive and required local election officials to apply a presumption of validity to all signatures on absent voter ballot applications and on absent voter ballots. The presumptions if found nowhere in statute."
Absent compliance, the "'rule' is invalid," the judge said.
Steve Witherspoon, who responded on Turley's website to an report on the decision, noted, "How many of President Trump's claims about election irregularities, illegal activities of election officials, and fraud have been proven correct now?"
He continued, "If the last four years has shown us anything, it's shown us how unethical, immoral and corrupt the political left has become. Their ends justifies the means, scorched earth anti-Trump, anti-Conservative and anti-Republican campaigns have [revealed] that many in the political left have become the evil that they profess to be against to destroy their ideological opposition and gain power."
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