West Central Michigan News

In the final days of ballot counting, President Donald Trump’s campaign and other members of the Republican Party have raised allegations that Democrat-controlled areas of the country may have lacked transparency and prevented legally authorized oversight.

Former Republican Michigan Sen. Patrick Colbeck was at the TCF Center as a poll challenger during the recent tallying of ballots from the Detroit area, and he appeared on WJR’s "The Frank Beckmann Show" to discuss what he saw there.

Colbeck said he was at the TCF Center from 5 p.m. on Nov. 3 through to 5 p.m. on Nov. 4.

“So I was right there when all the craziness that everybody’s talking about was happening, and I was on the floor as a poll challenger,” Colbeck told Beckmann.

Colbeck said that he was at the TCF Center as a member of the Election Integrity Fund, an organization that he founded. He told Beckmann that the group had about 500 volunteers working as poll challengers statewide, with 30 at the TCF Center who stayed into the late hours on Nov. 3.

Colbeck said that the Republicans weren’t the only poll challengers at the TCF Center, though the Democrat poll challengers targeted him and his group, rather than watching the counting process.

“They were deliberately instructed to interfere with the activities of our poll challengers,” Colbeck told Beckmann. “We don’t know the name of the person who did it, but we have people that were there, as these new challengers came in, and attested to the fact that they were being instructed to deliberately disrupt our activities.”

Colbeck said he also had problems getting any answers out of elections staff regarding questions, such as how the numbers from the count were going to be reported to the county.

“I was very curious as to what that fundamental process looked like, and they would not tell me,” Colbeck told Beckmann. “And the lack of transparency went well beyond that.”

Colbeck alleged that poll workers and elections staff used COVID-19 as an excuse to prevent poll challengers from being able to effectively watch the counting process.

“When you heard about the cardboard going up on the windows and everything, you know what excuse they were using to keep us out of the counting board? It was COVID,” Colbeck told Beckmann. “They were saying we were exceeding our COVID capacity.”