The Michigan officials who doubt elections--for no good reason

The Michigan officials who have publicly questioned the state's elections without evidence are easy to name — Kristina Karamo, Matthew DePerno, Patrick Colbeck, John James, and a group of Republican legislators who wrote to Congress in December 2020. The state's own recounts, audits, and fraud prosecutions tell a different story.

Kristina Karamo, the 2022 Republican nominee for secretary of state and later briefly chair of the Michigan Republican Party, became the state's most prominent promoter of unfounded 2020 election-fraud claims. As a poll challenger that year, Karamo said election software in 47 counties meant "over 200,000 votes" had been "potentially compromised". After losing the 2022 secretary of state race, she said, "I'll dispute the claim that I lost the race".

Matthew DePerno, the 2022 Republican nominee for attorney general, promoted debunked claims about Antrim County's voting machines. He now faces pending felony charges over alleged voting-machine possession and conspiracy and has pleaded not guilty.

Patrick Colbeck, a former Republican state senator, was singled out by the Michigan Senate's GOP-led investigation as a leading promoter of 2020 election conspiracies, including Dominion-machine and fractional-voting claims.

John James, the 2026 Republican nominee for governor, has repeatedly questioned the 2020 result. James said the election was "rigged and manipulated" to defeat him and President Trump. According to CNN, James has not answered questions about who won Michigan in 2020 or whether he would certify future results.

On December 14, 2020, a group of Michigan Republican state legislators signed a letter to Congress contesting Michigan's certified electoral votes, citing unsubstantiated fraud allegations without presenting evidence. Signers included Tom Barrett, Aric Nesbitt, Matt Hall, and Matt Maddock, all now sitting officials.

Anthony Forlini, the 2026 Republican nominee for secretary of state and the Macomb County clerk, is a different kind of figure. After residents told him they believed the 2020 count had been tampered with, Forlini ordered an independent audit of Macomb County's election server at a cost of about $16,000. The review found no outside interference or election misconduct. "Joe Biden was certified as president and served four years," Forlini has said.

What the paper trail shows

The Republican-led Michigan Senate Oversight Committee, in a June 23, 2021 report, found "no evidence of widespread or systematic fraud" in Michigan's 2020 election and said the certified result represented the ballots cast. Joe Biden won the state by 154,188 votes.

The committee also addressed the doubters' marquee claims directly. Antrim County's early 2020 reporting error — the launch point for years of fraud allegations — was a roughly 6,000-vote human error that was corrected within days. The committee found that theories of deliberate vote-switching by election equipment were "indefensible" and left promoters' other claims carrying "zero credibility". It described the fraud theories DePerno advanced as "demonstrably false" and urged citizens to apply "a critical eye and ear" to people who promote such theories for personal gain.

The state ran more than 250 post-election audits of the 2020 election, with hand counts of more than 18,000 randomly selected presidential ballots. Every audit affirmed the machine-tabulated outcome. The Michigan Office of the Auditor General later found more than 99.9% of 2020 ballots agreed with hand recounts.

The most famous test came in Antrim County itself. A full hand recount of every 2020 presidential ballot found 9,759 votes for Trump and 5,959 for Biden — a net change of only 12 votes from the certified totals — confirming the certified outcome. The audit attributed the small discrepancies to ordinary hand-counting differences rather than machine manipulation. Antrim remains a live site of election-integrity dispute: former clerk Sheryl Guy mounted an unsuccessful write-in campaign after Victoria Bishop's election.

In Detroit's 2020 absentee count, 83% of counting boards were either balanced or had explainable discrepancies after the audit — up from 27% at the close of the county canvass — leaving a net unexplained imbalance of 17 ballots out of roughly 174,000 absentee votes.

Attorney General Dana Nessel's office said it investigated 38 suspected noncitizen-voting or related election cases spanning 2009 through 2025. Six resulted in criminal charges, 10 were closed without charges, and 22 remained under review — small, individual acts rather than evidence of a coordinated effort to rig Michigan's elections. Separately, a Michigan judge dismissed the criminal case against the 15 remaining defendants accused of falsely certifying Trump as Michigan's 2020 winner as fake electors. One other defendant had charges dropped after agreeing to cooperate.

What a voter can check

For a voter who wants to verify any of this, the trail is short and local. Unofficial election-night totals can be compared against certified precinct-level totals posted by the county clerk, and voters can also check their information at Michigan.gov/Vote. Certification happens in public at the meetings of the bipartisan Board of County Canvassers — two Democrats and two Republicans — typically within about 14 days of an election. The Secretary of State's audit materials instruct observers to review results and worksheets with the local clerk and note that an audit is not a recount and does not change certified results.

What a clerk can actually verify — precinct-level totals, canvass minutes, audit worksheets — is exactly what a voter can ask to see. Statewide fraud allegations that no local canvass room substantiates are a different thing entirely.

The officials who question Michigan's elections are real and should be named. But the record a voter can check — in Antrim's hand recount, in Detroit's 17 unexplained ballots, in Macomb County's own hired audit — says the paper trail keeps coming up nearly empty of fraud.