DETROIT – Several Republicans went straight to the Michigan Supreme Court in an effort to try and stop Michigan’s electoral votes from going to President-Elect Joe Biden.
Michigan has already certified its election results, but President Donald Trump and his supporters are still hoping to find a way around the process.
The legal ability of the state legislature to choose new electors is murky at best. This latest lawsuit is only one of a few continuing the president and his campaign’s calls to undo an election they lost.
Inside the 54-page petition, two supporters of Trump are suing Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and the chair of the Board of State Canvassers, Jeannette Bradshaw, who certified Michigan’s election Monday.
The pair calling on the high court to ignore the results and have the Republican-held state legislature choose members of the Electoral College from Michigan likely to be friendly to the president. They also want ballots to be separated and held onto for an audit, claiming widespread fraud and irregularity, specifically in Detroit, where 80% of the residents are minorities.
Most of the claims made in the lawsuit have been debunked or thrown out in courtrooms across the country.
One of the women suing is the leader of the group Black voices for Trump, Dr. Linda Tarver. The other, Angelic Johnson, was part of a federal suit with similar claims that was dropped last week.
The suit also comes after Trump falsely claimed the election results in Detroit were fake during a Thanksgiving address to members of the military stationed overseas.
There has been no evidence of voter fraud or faked votes in Wayne County.
The suit is also one of six in the works by the conservative group Amistad, which filed a similar lawsuit in Wisconsin on Tuesday.
The lawsuit is expected to be on the Supreme Court docket by Monday. The two women behind it hope to have it heard before the Dec. 8 Electoral College deadline.
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