LANSING, Mich. – Michigan election workers and employees rolled a 10-sided die to choose 20 numbers that will go through a random number generating software to choose ballots to be inspected and audited.
More than 18,000 ballots will be used for what the state calls a risk-limiting audit. The ballots will be hand counted by clerks from both parties.
The audit is routine but will be under heavy scrutiny this year after repeated false claims that the state’s election was fraudulent or riddled with issues.
READ: Trust Index: Fact-checking Trump’s false claims of Michigan voter fraud in Georgia phone call
In a statement on Monday, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said that the audit “arms us with the facts and data needed to not only confirm the election results, but to restore faith in our elections and our democracy as a whole.”
The results of the election -- specifically surrounding those tallied using of voting software from Dominion Voting Systems -- was at the center of a hearing about false election claims.
Those claims focused on Antrim County where human error initially changed several thousand votes for President Trump to President-elect Joe Biden. It was corrected and isolated to that county. A hand count audit completed last month revealed that count was intact and only 12 votes were given back to Trump, who won the Antrim County by more than 4,000 votes.
Supreme Court rejects fast track for Trump election cases
The Supreme Court on Monday formally refused to put on a fast track election challenges filed by President Donald Trump and his allies.
The court rejected pleas for quick consideration of cases involving the outcome in five states won by President-elect Joe Biden: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The orders, issued without comment, were unsurprising. The justices had previously taken no action in those cases in advance of last week’s counting of the electoral votes in Congress, which confirmed Biden’s victory.