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Michigan Clerk Sherikia L. Hawkins Charged with Ballot Fraud in 2018 Election


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Lately we’ve been having to hear a lot about mail-in voting.

According to many Democrats, if states do not immedialy enact mail-in voting, the 2020 election will be compromised.

President Trump, however, has stated his skepticism of the voting method. He worries that mail-in voting opens opportunities for widespread voter fraud.

Here’s a video of the President expressing his views on mail-in voting:

Both Democrats and the media have been quick to dismiss the President. Organizations such as the New York Times and Vox repeatedly denounce the President's worries as "unfounded," "false," and based on no evidence.

It seems they may have spoken too quickly.

A Michigan city clerk was charged in September of last year for altering 193 absentee ballots.

The Detroit News originally reported:

Southfield City Clerk Sherikia L. Hawkins was charged Monday with six felony counts over "unauthorized and inaccurate" changes to absentee ballots in the November 2018 election.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson made a joint announcement of the charges in Detroit, calling it a "rare" case.

"Voting is fundamental to the very essence of our democracy," Nessel said during a Monday news conference. "It is incumbent upon state governments to safeguard the electoral process and ensure that every voter's right to cast a ballot is protected."

Allegations that Hawkins altered 193 absentee voter records came to light during the 14-day canvass following the election. Benson said the Oakland County Clerk’s Office reported with the Bureau of Elections "the potential for these irregularities and from there we began our investigation." 

Hawkins' alleged actions, did not alter the outcome of any election, Benson stressed, and "there were no voters that were disenfranchised."

"All valid votes in the election were ultimately counted and the final official vote total was accurate," Benson said. 

Hawkins, a Democrat who just a few months ago was honored by the state party with the Dingell/Levin Award at its Legacy Dinner in Detroit, could not be reached Monday at her office for comment or a number listed in public records. Her attorney also could not be reached. 

The potential misconduct was referred to Michigan State Police for an investigation. Benson on Monday released few details, citing the ongoing criminal case. 

Naturally, many on Twitter circulated the case in defense of the President's claims about mail-in voting:

The National Review had this to add:

Hawkins, who has overseen a total of 16 elections in Oakland County, began working in government in 2010 as deputy city clerk for the city of Pontiac, according to her LinkedIn profile. She was serving as the Pontiac city clerk when Democrat Gary Peters won a very tight congressional race against Republican Rocky Raczkowski in the state’s ninth congressional district in November 2010, the same election cycle that Republicans overwhelmingly reclaimed the House majority. Peters, who has has since been elected to the Senate, bested Raczkowski by just 6,405 votes out of a total 245,055 cast.

Michigan Rising Action, a local branch of the conservative advocacy group American Rising, is now calling for a sweeping investigation into all of the elections that Hawkins has overseen in her nearly ten-year career.

“The charges against Ms. Hawkins are extremely troubling and must be fully investigated. The integrity of our elections is essential to the protection of our constitutional rights and individual liberty. Michigan Rising Action is calling for a full audit of every election that Ms. Hawkins oversaw in her capacity as an elections official,” Tori Sachs, the group’s executive director, told National Review.

The group hopes to see the Michigan board of elections appoint an independent auditor to examine the entirety of Hawkins’s professional record to ensure that previous election results weren’t tainted.

Secretary of State Benson described Hawkins’s misconduct as “rare” in comments to reporters on Monday. While Hawkins’s brazenly fraudulent tactics may constitute a rarity, Detroit and its surrounding suburbs have experienced multiple instances of electoral incompetence and possible fraud in recent years.

Detroit city clerk Janice Winfrey’s office was audited by the state in 2017 after elections supervisors discovered discrepancies between ballot boxes and voting totals in nearly 60 percent of the city’s precincts. One year earlier, during the 2016 presidential election cycle, voting machines in more than one-third of Detroit’s precincts registered more votes than the number of registered voters in those precincts.

Here's the original news report from a Detroit news channel:



 

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