A citizen-led investigation of Detroit’s 2020 election records has uncovered that 12.4% of absentee ballots from taxpayer-subsidized housing facilities were counted without the official absentee ballot envelopes required by Michigan law.
Missing Envelopes Violate State Law
Over 100 volunteers led by Check My Vote founder Phani Mantravadi and New Jersey resident Yehuda Miller are examining nearly one million documents from Detroit and Wayne County’s November 2020 election. The records were released only after a judge forced the City of Detroit to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests that officials had repeatedly denied. The team has digitized and sequenced over 155,000 absentee ballot envelopes, flagging every questionable or illegally accepted ballot that Detroit officials processed in 2020.
Under Michigan law MCL 168.764a, every absentee ballot must be returned in the official state-issued return envelope containing the voter’s signature certificate. Clerks cannot ignore this requirement or process ballots received without proper envelopes. Knowingly processing absentee ballots that were not returned in the proper official envelope constitutes a serious violation of Michigan Election Law, raising questions about whether Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey was aware of the irregularities.
Fraudulent Addresses and Missing Voters
The investigation identified multiple irregularities beyond missing envelopes. One voter registered and voted from 8286 Auburn Street in Detroit, an address investigators confirmed does not exist. This individual received an absentee ballot that was officially stamped as received the day before the election and assigned ballot number 8574. The voter has since been removed from Michigan voter rolls. Another envelope showed a German address on the USPS delivery label, yet was signed October 30, 2020, but stamped as received by Detroit on October 3.
Secretary of State Directed Reduced Verification
In 2020, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson was admonished by a judge for mailing 7.7 million unsolicited voter applications to every eligible voter without proper approval. She also directed local clerks to ignore signature verification requirements during the largest mail-in election in Michigan history, when strict chain-of-custody rules and mandatory use of official absentee ballot envelopes were essential safeguards. The investigation team checks and rechecks all findings before public release to ensure accuracy. They plan to soon release the full discrepancy between the number of absentee ballots received versus the number of official absentee ballot envelopes submitted by the City of Detroit.
