Michigan judge says GOP election challengers skipped training session, didn't fully understand process

A Michigan judge has shot down an attempt to delay the certification of 2020 election results in Detroit, Michigan, after determining that challengers lacked a "full understanding" of the process and their claims weren't credible.

Judge Timothy Kenny on Friday rejected two poll challengers' bid to stop vote certification in Detroit, where President-elect Joe Biden defeated President Trump, saying it "would be an unprecedented exercise of judicial activism for this court" to do so, CNN reports. The judge found the allegations of misconduct brought by the Republican poll watchers and an election official to be "not credible," The Washington Post reports.

Additionally, Kenny said that while the plaintiffs relied "on numerous affidavits from election challengers who paint a picture of sinister fraudulent activities occurring" at the TCF Center in Detroit, the challengers didn't attend a training session on Oct. 29, and as a result, they "did not have a full understanding of the TCF absent ballot tabulation process," per Bloomberg. The judge added that the "plaintiffs' interpretation of events is incorrect and not credible."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Lawyers had previously argued that the witnesses, "armed with little knowledge of the vote-counting process, had been alarmed by normal procedures they did not understand," the Post reports.

"Perhaps if Plaintiffs' election challenger affiants had attended the Oct. 29, 2020 walk-through of the TCF Center ballot counting location, questions and concerns could have been answered in advance of Election Day," the judge said on Friday. "Regrettably, they did not." Brendan Morrow