MARKEY TOWNSHIP, Michigan (Reuters) – The top election official in this small Michigan town said she received an unusual call in March last year. A Republican state lawmaker who backed former President Donald Trump’s lie of a stolen 2020 election wanted access to voting machines.
Daire Rendon, a vocal promoter of Trump’s baseless claims of widespread fraud in the November election, said in that call she wanted to conduct an audit and needed access to the vote tabulator the town uses to process ballots, the clerk, Sheryl Tussey, told Reuters.
Tussey denied the request, the latest example of a multi-state effort by supporters of Trump to gain unauthorized access to voting systems while promoting conspiracy theories about rigged voting machines. An April 28 Reuters investigation highlighted eight such breaches or attempted breaches in five U.S. states.
Since then, several more have come to light, including the effort in Markey, a lakeside town of about 2,300 people in conservative and thinly populated Roscommon County, which overwhelmingly backed Trump in 2020.