Past election challengers quiet as Michigan board certifies Trump's win

LANSING, Mich. — The criticism, drama and refusals to concede that marked Michigan's last two statewide elections were missing Friday, as the Board of State Canvassers certified Republican Donald Trump's 80,156-vote win over Democrat Kamala Harris in the presidential contest.

The canvassers' meeting inside the Michigan Senate's Binsfeld Office Building lasted about 90 minutes and cemented former President-elect Trump's victory of 1.4 percentage points, 49.7%-48.3%, over the incumbent vice president.

Four years earlier, Trump lost Michigan to Democrat Joe Biden by a wider margin, 154,188 votes, but Trump and his supporters advanced false claims that the election had been stolen from him because of widespread fraud and they attempted to overturn his defeat in the U.S. Congress.

In 2020, the Michigan and national Republican parties asked the Board of State Canvassers to delay certification of the state's election results in a bid to investigate what they described as "anomalies and irregularities." The canvassing meeting on Nov. 23, 2020, lasted more than eight hours and saw the four-member board eventually approve the results with one of the two Republicans abstaining.

Mary Ellen Gurewitz, a Democrat and chairwoman of the Board of State Canvassers, said she believes there were no protests at Friday's meeting because "the people who protested last time are satisfied with the election."

"I do not expect Democrats to come and say that we shouldn't certify the election, because I think people understand that our obligation is a ministerial one," Gurewitz said. "We just have to say, 'These are the numbers.' And it does not matter if we like them or not."

The numbers on Friday said Trump got 2,816,586 votes, while Harris received 2,736,430 votes.

After the 2020 election, supporters of Trump sought a "forensic audit" of the voting process in Michigan, and Republicans in the state Legislature held a series of committee hearings examining the claims of widespread fraud.

Then, in January 2021, the Michigan Republican Party declined to renominate Aaron Van Langevelde, the lone GOP member of the Board of State Canvassers who voted to certify the 2020 election results, for his position on the panel.

Two years later, the statewide certification meeting for the 2022 election also saw protests. That year, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer won another term over Republican Tudor Dixon by 10 percentage points, 54%-44%. Republican secretary of state candidate Kristina Karamo declined to concede her race, which she lost to incumbent Democrat Jocelyn Benson by 14 percentage points, 42%-56%, or 615,000 votes.

“The fraud in our elections — the corruption, the systemic corruption in our election system — touches all races,” Karamo said after the 2022 election.

The scene was strikingly different Friday. There were only about 20 people in the crowd for the canvassing meeting. They were mostly state government staffers and journalists.

Only three members of the public spoke at the event.

One of them, election lawyer Eric Doster, who previously served as general counsel for the Michigan Republican Party, questioned the state's processes for ensuring that individuals who are not U.S. citizens can't vote. On Oct. 27, a University of Michigan student who is from China and not a U.S. citizen allegedly voted in Ann Arbor. The student, Haoxiang Gao, 19, has been charged with committing two crimes.

Asked if he was challenging the integrity of the election, Doster told reporters as he left the Senate building, "Heavens no."

"I just want to know what kind of tools there are to detect and prevent this," Doster said.

Another public commenter Friday was Fred Nienstedt, a Trump supporter from Clinton Township in Macomb County. After the meeting, Nienstedt said the "media is bunk" and people have "no trust in the system," while he was explaining why he believes the interest in the canvassing meeting this year was smaller than in 2022 and 2020.

Asked if it might have been because Trump won in 2024, Nienstedt replied, "He won last time," referring to the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Biden.

Michael Ross of Troy, who was in the crowd for the canvassing meeting, said Trump's victory had spurred a "sense of relief" among voters

"There's been so much drama and tension and everything," Ross said. "And it seems like something went right."

Tony Daunt, a Republican member of the Board of State Canvassers, said the people who protested the 2022 election were "particularly detached from reality." He noted that they sought recounts of two statewide ballot proposals that passed with heavy support in Michigan.

One of them, Proposal 2, which allowed for nine days of early voting, had received the backing of 60% of Michigan voters.

Daunt said it was possible people had learned a lesson from the 2020 presidential election. Daunt said the lesson was they need to abide by the results "whether or not you like them."

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