A massive citizen-led investigation has uncovered that 12.4% of absentee ballots from 51 taxpayer-subsidized Detroit housing addresses were counted in the 2020 election without the official envelope required by Michigan law, raising serious questions about election integrity and legal compliance.
The Investigation That Uncovered Missing Envelopes
Over 100 volunteers are now reviewing nearly one million documents from Detroit and Wayne County’s November 2020 election. The records were finally released after a judge forced the City of Detroit to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests filed by New Jersey resident Yehuda Miller. The team, led by Check My Vote founder Phani Mantravadi, has successfully digitized and sequenced over 155,000 absentee ballot envelopes, examining each one for irregularities and potential fraud.
Michigan law MCL 168.764a mandates that every absentee ballot must be returned in the official state-issued return envelope containing the voter’s signature certificate. Clerks lack discretion to ignore this requirement or process ballots received without proper envelopes. Knowingly processing absentee ballots that were not returned in the proper official return envelope constitutes a serious violation of Michigan Election Law, yet thousands of ballots appear to have been counted anyway.
Fraudulent Addresses and Impossible Dates
The investigation revealed troubling examples beyond missing envelopes. One voter registered from 8286 Auburn Street in Detroit, an address that does not exist. This individual received an absentee ballot and voted in 2020, with records showing ballot number 8574 assigned. The voter has since been removed from Michigan voter rolls. Another absentee ballot envelope displayed a German address on the mailing label, yet showed a signature date of October 30, 2020, while Detroit’s official stamp indicated receipt on October 3—a physical impossibility.
Context and Broader Implications
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 Michigan’s largest mail-in election in history. The current investigation’s findings raise questions about whether Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey knew about absentee ballots being counted without required envelopes. Volunteers continue checking and rechecking data before releasing full findings to ensure accuracy in what has become one of the largest citizen-led election integrity investigations in American history.
