Government

Michigan Republicans Fry Up Last Kraken Tentacle

That should put the matter to rest, right?

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(Image via Getty)

Today the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee released a report concluding that there was no systemic fraud or error which changed the result of the 2020 presidential election. So, thank goodness that’s all settled, right? Guess we never have to hear about Dominion or Smartmatic or Italygate or PCAPs or Mike Lindell or Sidney Powell or Rudy Giuliani ever again.

HA HA.

The fact that a bipartisan commission led by Republicans thoroughly debunked each and every conspiracy theory put forth by people seeking to overturn the election will probably have no effect on conspiracy theorists who insist that Hugo Chávez’s ghost hacked the vote. And it certainly won’t stop the state’s Republican legislators from ramming through unnecessary voter ID and absentee ballot laws that curtail access to the polls — they’re doing that right now as we type.

And yet, it’s still important that both parties start pushing back on the insanity of the Big Lie which has gripped the country for six months and counting. It matters that elected officials are telling their constituents that there were no hordes of dead people voting; no machines switching votes via a backdoor algorithm; no stacks of fraudulent ballots being delivered to the TCF Center in Detroit to swing the election to Biden. It’s critical that elected officials stop describing poll workers as Deep State partisans and acknowledge that these were civil servants and volunteers doing their jobs while a crazed mob banged on the doors, screaming to stop the count.

And it’s entirely welcome — if unforgivably late — that Republican officials are finally calling out those within their own ranks who flogged these abject lies for their own benefit.

Describing the theory about vote manipulation in Antrim County as “blatherskite,” the report illustrates exactly how the purveyors deliberately mischaracterized a quickly-addressed tabulation error as evidence of cheating, and how that lie became canon on the right, featuring in multiple lawsuits.

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“Further, the Committee is appalled at what can only be deduced as willful ignorance or avoidance of this proof perpetuated by some leading such speculation,” they wrote, adding that the lie was “mentioned by officials at the White House, in media, at rallies, and in several, substantial online documentaries.”

And indeed the Committee went further than just debunking the lies, recommending that the state’s attorney general “consider investigating those who have been utilizing misleading and false information about Antrim County to raise money or publicity for their own ends.”

Which they need not have done, since Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel is already on the case, petitioning the court to sanction the Kraken lawyers for clogging the federal docket with bogus, redundant, incompetently pled election suits.

Coming out and saying “Our clear finding is that citizens should be confident the results represent the true results of the ballots cast by the people of Michigan” is the very least Michigan’s Republican legislators could do.

But at least they finally did it.

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GOP investigation finds no Michigan vote fraud, deems many claims ‘ludicrous’ [Bridge Michigan]

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

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