- Trump's supporters tried to breach voting systems in Michigan in 11 incidents, Reuters reported.
- They tried to gain unauthorized access to equipment to prove Trump's baseless voter fraud claims.
- Authorities are investigating if the incidents were coordinated, said Michigan's secretary of state.
Supporters of former President Donald Trump tried to gain unauthorized access — sometimes successfully — to voting equipment in 11 incidents across Michigan, Reuters reported, citing state police documents.
The outlet wrote that the state has been investigating incidents involving local election systems that Republican officials and pro-Trump activists breached in an attempt to prove Trump's baseless claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.
The investigation has grown to a stage where Michigan state police have obtained warrants to seize voting equipment and records in three towns and one county, per Reuters.
The outlet reported that it had seen police records detailing how several of these breaches occurred: One official reportedly gave two vote-counting tabulators to an unauthorized, unidentified "third party" who kept them for weeks in early 2021, while a county clerk told investigators she also gave her equipment to unauthorized parties.
Jocelyn Benson, Michigan's Democratic secretary of state, told Reuters that the state is currently investigating if the 11 incidents were coordinated and would "seek accountability for all involved." Michigan is a crucial battleground state for elections, which President Joe Biden won in 2020.
The 11 incidents in Michigan are part of a larger count of 17 breaches being investigated across the US, per Reuters, which previously reported similar incidents in Colorado and North Carolina.
In the Colorado case, a clerk copied voting data from a server onto two hard drives and gave them to lawyers, per the outlet. Meanwhile, the North Carolina incident involved a local GOP leader threatening to fire an election official if she didn't give him unauthorized access to voting systems.
According to Reuters, Trump won in all the Michigan counties where the 11 breaches occurred. The results were certified by 250 post-election audits carried out by the Bureau of Elections.
However, per Reuters, pro-Trump activists and officials wanted to prove that the former president won by a larger margin in these areas.
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