Audit Affirms Michigan's Presidential Election Results: Benson

LANSING, MI — An audit of the November 2020 General Election results in Michigan has affirmed that President Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in the presidential election, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said Friday.

“This statewide audit process affirms what election officials on both sides of the aisle have said since November — that Michigan’s election was conducted securely and fairly, and the results accurately reflect the will of the voters," Benson said in a statement. "I congratulate our election clerks for carrying out the most successful election in our state’s history and thank them for affirming the integrity of our elections by participating in this process.

“The work of elected leaders now is to tell voters the truth and move forward with nonpartisan election policy to advance the will of Michigan voters, who have demonstrated clearly and unequivocally that they want our elections to continue to be secure, strong and accessible.”

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Hundreds of Republican, Democratic and nonpartisan municipal and county clerks from more than 1,300 local jurisdictions took part in Michigan’s statewide auditing exercise, Benson said. The number of jurisdictions involved in the audit was more than ever before, according to the Secretary of State office.

The clerks hand-counted more than 18,000 ballots that were randomly selected throughout the state, Benson said. In that count, Biden received more votes than former President Donald Trump, and the percentage of votes for each candidate was within fractions of a percentage point of machine-tabulated totals, Benson said.

In the state’s three largest counties, each of which uses a different voting machine vendor, Benson said, the audit results were also all within 1 percentage point of the November results. She said that although a random sample of 18,000 ballots would not be expected to exactly match the percentages of votes cast for candidates out of all 5.5 million ballots, the closeness in percentages between the hand-reviewed ballots and the machine-tabulated totals provides strong additional evidence of the accuracy of the machine count.

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Benson's office said Biden received votes on 50 percent of all reviewed ballots in a statewide sample while Trump received 48 percent.

Biden received 68 percent of votes on reviewed ballots in Wayne County as opposed to Trump's 31 percent, Benson's office said. Wayne County used Dominion machines, which have been highly scrutinized following the election. However, claims against Dominion have been unfounded, according to multiple reports.

In Wayne County, which uses Dominion machines, Biden received 68 percent, while Trump received 31 percent. Biden received 57 percent while Trump received 41 percent in Oakland County, which uses Hart machines, Benson's office said. In Macomb County, which uses ES&S machines, Biden received 44 percent and Trump received 54 percent.

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The audit was done by generating a statewide manifest that included the number of ballots cast in every jurisdiction and then using a randomly generated 20-digit number to select 18,162 of them, according to Benson's office. Clerks then retrieved ballots that had been selected in their jurisdictions and shared if it had a vote for president and, if so, who it was for.

Clerks retrieved a total of 18,084 ballots total; 21 clerks did not retrieve 78 ballots in their jurisdictions, meaning the sample was 78 ballots short of a complete sample. For this reason, the audit is being considered a pilot exercise, officials said.