Lansing — Karen McDonald, Oakland County’s prosecutor who wanted to be the Democratic nominee for attorney general, says her team has uncovered “widespread irregularities affecting at least hundreds of voters” at the party’s April 19 convention.
McDonald lost the attorney general race at the gathering to Washtenaw County Prosecutor Eli Savit. But in recent days, she says, she’s found party members whose votes were recorded incorrectly and people who voted but their votes weren’t recorded at all. Meanwhile, McDonald contends more than 200 votes were cast from individuals who weren’t in Detroit, despite the fact that voters were supposed to be in person at the convention in Detroit to participate.
McDonald laid out her findings and called for a third-party, comprehensive audit in a five-page letter to Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Curtis Hertel on Friday. The Detroit News obtained the letter Saturday morning.
In the message, the Oakland County prosecutor said she chose not to officially contest the convention result because she is “not committed to participating in a ‘do-over.'”
“There was behavior at the endorsement convention that was reprehensible and antisemitic,” McDonald said. “Absent an audit, a plan for a secure and accurate election process and a commitment by party leadership to create an environment where everyone can feel safe and be heard, there is no reason to expect a different result in August.
“I would not put my family, my supporters or my staff through that again. The fact that I did not appeal is not a reason to ignore these issues.”
The April 19 convention was intended to allow party members to endorse candidates for attorney general, secretary of state and university board positions ahead of the November general election. However, the winning candidates won’t be formally nominated until a convention in August.
Hertel said, on Saturday, an audit by the party and an audit by the party’s software vendor for its voting system were occurring.
In the weeks since the April 19 convention, multiple high-profile Michigan Democrats have raised concerns about the electronic voting system, involving people’s personal cellphones, that was used to cast votes and whether the in-person voting requirement was actually enforced by the party.
The party has not released to the public the vote tallies from the convention.
Michigan’s current attorney general, Democrat Dana Nessel, previously announced she supports of the call for an independent audit of the convention.
Nessel said the electronic voting system didn’t correctly attribute her votes. Nessel’s vote for attorney general was initially attributed to Savit, according to unofficial records reviewed by The News. However, Nessel actually abstained from voting in the race, according to a spokeswoman.
Michigan’s Sen. Sylvia Santana of Detroit previously appealed her narrow loss in a race for a seat on the Michigan State University Board of Trustees. According to unofficial numbers, previously obtained by The Detroit News, Santana finished in third place by about 15 weighted votes for the second of two nominations for the MSU board. The approximately 6,600 votes at the convention were weighted based on the county they came from for the results.
Santana got 2,804.2 weighted votes, while incumbent Trustee Kelly Tebay got 2,819.2 weighted votes, according to the unofficial numbers The News has reviewed.
According to the unofficial numbers, incumbent Trustee Brianna Scott of Muskegon finished in first place in the MSU race with about 38% of the vote. Tebay and Santana each got about 31% for the second spot on the November ballot.
For attorney general, Savit won with about 59% of the vote, while McDonald received about 41%, according to the unofficial numbers. That would be a difference of about 914 weighted votes, out of about 5,366.
In her letter, McDonald said party leadership has stated that “the vote differential in the attorney general’s race is large and that ‘unless you can find 1000 votes’ it doesn’t matter.”
“I respectfully disagree,” McDonald wrote in her letter.
In addition to Nessel, McDonald said state Sen. Rosemary Bayer, D-West Bloomfield, was recorded as a Savit voter but Bayer “indicates that she was present at the convention and voted for Karen McDonald.”
Bayer previously didn’t respond to a request for comment about the matter.
McDonald’s letter listed six people who voted, but their names weren’t in the initial tallies released to candidates. McDonald said her team found 94 voters whose weighted voted were not properly associated with their registered voting address.
In addition, McDonald said an expert analysis of the IP addresses with each vote showed more than 200 people cast votes who were not present.
“Voters who appear have used a VPN or whose message was routed through a data center are not included in that number,” McDonald wrote.
“In other words, we know conservatively of over 200 voters who were not in Detroit when they voted, and self-reports from voters make clear that there are many more,” the letter said. “Those self-reports include voters who indicated that they voted from Antrim, Michigan, and Montenegro.”
The News previously identified a voter who acknowledged submitting her vote from Antrim County
Hertel said he can’t take a vote away from someone for being offsite. There is an appeals process to handle that, he said.
cmauger@detroitnews.com
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Candidate sees ‘widespread irregularities’ at Michigan Dem convention
Reporting by Craig Mauger, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
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