Capitol News

The Michigan Republican Party announced Friday it will be referring a whistleblower case from the city of Detroit to the U.S. Attorney’s office.

Michigan GOP Chairman Laura Cox said a City of Detroit employee was instructed to change the date of receipt on ballots received after the deadline.

“The MIGOP has referred a whistleblower case to the U.S. Attorney in which a city of Detroit employee was directed to change the date of receipt, in the official election record on ballots which had been received after the deadline,” Cox said. "This directive allegedly came from both City and State employees who were working at the TCF center. These allegations are highlighted by the city of Detroit’s attempt to block Republican poll challengers from supervising this process.”

Trump supporters have been holding protests outside the TCF Center, where votes are being counted.

On Friday 200 protesters were in attendance.

House and Senate oversight hearings have also been announced.

Cox alleges the GOP poll watchers were kept from the TCF Center on Election Day.

“The City of Detroit intentionally deceived the media about the presence of Republican poll challengers by continuing to count Republican poll challengers who had left the building in their official total, and not allowing replacements to fill the vacancies. They had a no sign-out process and knowingly created a system where we were not permitted to have the number of challengers that we are legally obligated to.”

In addition, Cox said errors in software used in Antrim County caused votes to be improperly tabulated from Democrats and may have affected other counties.

“If all this wasn’t enough, in Antrim County - ballots were counted for Democrats that were meant for Republicans causing a 6,000-vote swing against our candidates,” she said. “The county clerk came forward and said the tabulating software glitched and caused a misallocation of the votes. Since then, we have now discovered that 47 other counties use this software in some capacity. Antrim County had to hand count all of their ballots, and these other counties that used this software need to closely examine their results for similar discrepancies.”