Nathan Layne

MARKEY TOWNSHIP (Reuters) – The head of elections in this tiny Michigan town claimed she was contacted by an unusual phone call last March. A Republican state lawmaker who backed former President Donald Trump’s lie of a stolen 2020 election wanted access to voting machines.

Daire Rendon, a vocal promoter of Trump’s baseless claims of widespread fraud in the November election, said in that call she wanted to conduct an audit and needed access to the vote tabulator the town uses to process ballots, the clerk, Sheryl Tussey, told Reuters.

Tussey refused the request. It is just the latest example in a multi-state conspiracy by Trump supporters to obtain unauthorized entry to voting systems. Eight such attempted or actual breaches were identified in five U.S. state investigations by Reuters on 28 April.

More have been revealed since then. Markey is a small town on the shores of Lake Roscommon County with approximately 2,300 residents. Trump was overwhelmingly supported in 2020.

The Michigan State Police and Dana Nessel, the Michigan Attorney General, have been looking into incidents of unauthorized access in several counties within this critical swing state. This crucial state voted in Donald Trump and Democratic President Joe Biden.

Many attempts to hack into vote tabulators have failed. This is because the state ordered voting-system maintenance and upgrades would not erase any evidence of fraud. State election officials say those processes have no impact on the voting systems’ ability to save data from past elections.

Tussey stated that Rendon called her March 20, 2021. “I didn’t think long. It was not easy. I didn’t think it was right,” Tussey told Reuters.

Roscommon County’s two other clerks told Reuters that they were approached similarly. One said she was contacted by Rendon, who last year was photographed wearing a button featuring the letter “Q,” a symbol for a right-wing QAnon conspiracy theory movement. Uncertain if Rendon approached her, one of the clerks wouldn’t confirm.

Rendon’s constituency also includes Roscommon County did not reply to our request for comment. Rendon, who was publicly openly supportive of the “Big Lie”, that Trump lost in 2020 election fraud, said so.

Carol Asher, clerk of Roscommon County’s Denton Township, said she found it strange that Rendon contacted her on a Saturday on her cell phone instead of during business hours at work. Asher claimed that Rendon demanded access to her on the weekend as Rendon’s coworkers were present in town.

Asher said, “If it was legal, you bring in a document from the Secretary-of-State or some such,” and Tussey, is also a Republican. It was strange to me, but it wasn’t allowed.

Detroit News reported Rendon’s outreach to Asher for the first time.

“INAPPROPRIATE ACCESS”

Asher presented Reuters a copy dated March 10, 2022 of a statement she had provided to Nessel’s bureau. Rendon requested that Rendon be allowed to access the voting tables in order to get there within weeks of the 2020 election. The statement claims that Asher refused to grant the request.

Nessel and state police began their investigation at Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s request. Benson disclosed in February that an unidentified party “allegedly had inappropriate access tabulation machines, data drives used to Richfield Township or Roscommon County”, but did not provide any details.

Richfield Township officials refused to comment.

Rendon made a statement on June 26, 2021 claiming that she had evidence of systematic fraud in Michigan’s November 2020 elections. That evidence was not revealed by her.

Rendon’s statement came three days after a Republican-controlled Michigan state Senate committee released a long-awaited report confirming there was no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. After Biden won, Trump put pressure on Republican legislators to intervene on his behalf to overturn his loss, and his campaign’s lawyers filed unsuccessful litigation in several states seeking to prove voter fraud.

Carie Milburn from Roscommon Township claimed that someone approached her asking for access to her tabulators. She did not name the individual, citing the ongoing investigation, but said she wondered why the person wanted to access her equipment, made by Election Systems & Software LLC.

Dominion Voting Systems was the company that manufactured the machines. She pointed out the conspiracy theories and rumors swirling around at the time. Both firms noted that voter fraud claims involving their machines has been consistently debunked.

“I remember saying well we have ES&S, we don’t have Dominion, so I’m not even sure why you would want access to anything of ours,” Milburn said, recalling that the person’s response was because they wanted to compare the two machines.

Milburn stated that Milburn was approached March 20, 2021 by Rendon, which was the exact date Tussey was contacted.