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The Michigan Department of State is calling foul on a video distributed by the Michigan Republican Party.
Text accompanying the video says it shows a ballot drop box in the City of Lansing, left unlocked.
An accompanying statement from Michigan Republican Party Chair Laura Cox says she’s “outraged at the complete negligence shown by the Lansing City Clerk’s office and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.”
Cox calls for a full investigation, to determine if any ballots were stolen or tampered with.
The video shows an individual walking up to the box, opening it, and stating that there are “ballots” inside.
The video then shows what appears to be a single envelope in the basket. It is obviously not a ballot. You can compare them, below.
In fact, Department of State spokesman Jake Rollow says the envelope could not have been a ballot, nor could any actual ballots have been involved, because the video was shot before any absentee ballots had been released to voters.
Rollow calls it a “blatantly false statement… likely intended to suppress voting among Michigan citizens.” They’ve turned the matter over to the Attorney General’s office for investigation as election misinformation.
In a follow-up statement released late yesterday, Cox admits that the item in the box may not have been a ballot.
She says they copied the video from a private Facebook page, where it was posted on September 25th, but offers no proof as to when it was originally shot.
She reiterates her call for an investigation into the security of lockboxes, and accuses Benson of being “more concerned with playing partisan games than she is about election integrity.”
You can link to the entire video, complete with obscenity, here.
