The Dispatch
Share this post
Did Detroit Poll Workers Scan the Same Ballots Over and Over?
factcheck.thedispatch.com
The Dispatch Fact Check

Did Detroit Poll Workers Scan the Same Ballots Over and Over?

No.

Khaya Himmelman
Dec 10, 2020
Comment4
Share
Melissa Carone, who was working for Dominion Voting Services, speaks in front of the Michigan House Oversight Committee in Lansing, Michigan on December 2, 2020. - The president's attorneys, led by Rudy Giuliani, have made numerous allegations of election fraud. (Photo by JEFF KOWALSKY / AFP) (Photo by JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images)
Melissa Carone speaks in front of the Michigan House Oversight Committee. (Photograph by Jeff KowalskyAFP/Getty Images.)

An article about the testimony of supposed whistleblower and contractor for Dominion Voting Systems, Melissa Carone says that Carone “dropped many truth bomb” about election fraud in Michigan. 

During testimony before the Michigan House Oversight Committee on December 2, Carone claimed, according to both the viral article and a transcript of last Wednesday’s hearing, that she “observed numerous employees, city workers, running batches of ballots through the tabulators countless times without discarding them first.”

Carone says in her affidavit that on November 3, while working at the TFC Center in Detroit as a contractor for Dominion Voting Systems, she saw “nothing but fraudulent actions take place.” Carone also said that tabulators would get jammed “4-5 times an hour“ and instead of discarding the ballots, the entire batch was rescanned. “I witnessed countless workers rescanning the batches without discarding them first, which resulted in ballots being counted 4-5 times.” Carone made similar allegations on December 2 before the Michigan House Oversight Committee. 

While the caption of the social media post is correct, because yes, a Dominion contractor did in fact say that ballots were scanned multiple times, the actual allegation is not. There is no evidence to corroborate  Carone’s claims that ballots in Michigan were counted multiple times. 

Carone’s affidavit, as reported by the Washington Post, was included in the lawsuit filed by the Trump campaign that sought to stop the certification of Wayne County’s election results. Wayne County circuit judge Timothy M. Kenny, however, denied that request. 

In his ruling, Kenny described Carone’s statement as follows: “There are no other reports of lost data, or tabulating machines that jammed repeatedly every hour during the count. Neither Republican nor Democratic challengers nor city officials substantiate her version of events.” He then said Carone’s allegations were “simply not credible.”

Joe Biden won Michigan by 154,000 votes, and the state certified its election on November 23. On December 1 Attorney General William Barr said there was no evidence of voter fraud that would change the results of the 2020 presidential election. 

During the hearing on December 2, State Rep. Steve Johnson questioned Carone’s allegation that ballots were counted multiple times. He noted that if her allegation was true, and batches of ballots were in fact counted multiple times, that would be reflected in the poll book. He explained this as follows:

“If these ballots were run through multiple times as you’ve alleged, and then you said possibly up to 30,000 times,” Johnson asked, “definitely thousands of times being counted, when we examine the poll book and see who voted and we count those numbers, would they then not line up with the total number of votes coming out of Detroit?” 

As the hearing continued, Johnson made clear to Carone that the poll books were not off by 30,000 votes, as she had alleged. “I guess that’s my question,”Johnson said, “is why we’re not seeing the poll book off by 30,000 votes. That’s not the case.”

Carone was not able to provide evidence to the contrary, but instead suggested that something “crazy” must have been done to the poll book: “What’d you guys do?” Carone asked Johnson, “take it and do something crazy to it?”

In addition to her false claims about the voting machines in Detroit, Carone said in an interview with Sarah Palin that Barack Obama funded a lab in Wuhan, China, to “make COVID” in an attempt to hurt Donald Trump: “This started with Covid. The Obamas funded that Wuhan lab to make Covid. Then the impeachment process. They’ve used every avenue possible to cheat, they used Dominion.”

Comment4
ShareShare

Create your profile

0 subscriptions will be displayed on your profile (edit)

Skip for now

Only Dispatch Members only can comment on this post

Already a paid subscriber? Sign in

Check your email

For your security, we need to re-authenticate you.

Click the link we sent to , or click here to sign in.

BWG
Dec 12, 2020

I heard Bill Barr and Elton John are twins separated at birth. Or maybe they're actually the same person. They do look an awful lot alike. Can you fact check that?

Expand full comment
Reply
1 reply
Jason Gibson
Dec 12, 2020

it's such a bizarre world that we live in..............more bizarre by the day.

Expand full comment
Reply
2 more comments…
TopNewCommunity

No posts

Ready for more?

© 2022 The Dispatch
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Publish on Substack Get the app
Substack is the home for great writing