A video of an election official asking volunteers to count multiple ballots with the same signature in Antrim County, Michigan, is being widely circulated on social media.
Matthew DePerno, the attorney who filed a lawsuit against Antrim County election officials on behalf Central Lake resident William Bailey, released the video footage as alleged evidence of voter fraud in the county.
In his lawsuit, DePerno alleged the fraudulent usage of Dominion Voting Machines and was allowed by Circuit Court Judge Kevin A Elsenheimer to have a cybersecurity firm perform a forensic examination of 16 of the machines used by election officials in the county and found that the machines had a 68.05% error rate.
Based on the findings, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson ordered a hand recount of the county's presidential election ballots at the Kearney Township hall in Bellaire, MI, where DePerno and 6 officials from Benson's office were present to observe and ensure the volunteer poll workers did not stray away from their objective.
'We Need to Do the Counts'
The clip, one of many released by DePerno from the audit, was taken at a table where the ballots from Central Lake Township were being tabulated. The video shows a volunteer questioning "multiple ballots with the same signature." According to DePerno, there were 138 ballots with the same penmanship.
The official in the video, a woman, can then be seen asking the volunteer to ignore what they believe is voter fraud and count the ballots in order to "move forward."
"We need to do the counts because if we don't have the counts, then we can't move forward. And we understand that there is a concern with this precinct—but this is not a time for you to be investigating right now," she can he heard saying. "So, you need to move forward with the audit, so we can get the numbers, so we can see how many ballots are here."
"So when we're done with the audit, there's still the opportunity to challenge the fact that we have multiple ballots with the very same signature?," the volunteer asks.
"I don't know if 'challenge' is the right word," the official responds.
'That's Not Your Role At This Moment'
Another volunteer then steps in to tell the official that they'll go ahead with the counting process but will set aside the ballots that bear the same signature.
"And again, we know that you have a concern with this precinct," she tells them, explaining, "That's not your role at this very moment," as she continues to push for them to ignore the multiple ballots with matching signatures.
"What I need you to do right now is finish the audit," she reiterates. Both the volunteers explain that they are going to make a note of the valid and invalid ballots, to which the official replies, "Again, that is not the process right now."
"What I need for you to do right now is to finish the presidential race audit, not separate them out, and then move forward from there," she says as she continues to demand that the ballots are counted as legitimate votes. Watch the video below:
