Justice Department demands Michigan county turn over 2024 ballots

The Justice Department has demanded that Wayne County, Michigan, turn over all ballots from the November 2024 election, another escalation in the Trump administration’s voting inquiries.

In a letter to the chief election official of Wayne County dated April 14, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon cited three convictions for election fraud and five lawsuits against the county that alleged election fraud. Dhillon gave the county 14 days to produce the requested documents, which included ballots, ballot receipts and ballot envelopes.

Trump carried Michigan on his way to winning the presidency in 2024, though he lost solidly Democratic Wayne County, which is home to Detroit, by nearly 250,000 votes.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, called the request “absurd” and “baseless” in a statement.

“Once again, President Trump is weaponizing the Justice Department in an attempt to sabotage our democratic process and turn it into his own personal agency to interfere in state elections,” she wrote in a statement posted on X. “If this administration wants to bring this circus to our state, my office is prepared to protect the people’s right to vote.”

Nessel said that the convictions cited by Dhillon proved that Michigan’s election safeguards were effective, adding that “the instances of voter fraud are rare and addressed.”

“Using these prosecutions and recycling debunked 2020 election conspiracy theories as justification to demand copies of the ballots of Michigan residents is a clear attempt to bully clerks and spread fear, even after Donald Trump won Michigan in 2024,” Nessel said.

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The Trump administration has so far requested voting records from 29 states and Washington, D.C.

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The FBI subpoenaed election records in Maricopa County, Arizona, last month related to the 2020 election. That came after the agency raided an elections hub in Fulton County, Georgia, earlier in the year, seizing of records related to the 2020 election.

The administration’s inquiries come as Trump, who has long made false claims about widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election and in Democratic areas, has sought to exert greater federal control over elections.

He signed an executive order last month seeking to create federal lists of citizens as a way to tighten mail-voting rules, drawing a flurry of lawsuits from Democrats and voting rights advocates.

And earlier this year, Trump sparked alarm among election officials when he said Republicans should “take over the voting“ in at least 15 unspecified places. Article 1 of the Constitution delegates power over how elections are run to the states.