Late into the Detroit city races, allegations are flying of
election fraud out the office of City Clerk Jackie L. Currie.
Friday, a judge called an emergency hearing over allegations that Detroit City Clerk Jackie Currie violated a court order.
The hearing was called after Judge Mary Beth Kelly got word from state elections officials that their own staff members had witnessed improper practices on the part of local elections workers in Detroit.
Susan McRill is a 20-year veteran of the Secretary of State department who has been watching over Detroit's elections office this week.
She testified that she has seen a number of improper practices, including signatures of absentee ballots that don't match the official signature on record.
Friday, McRill testified that she accompanied an elections assistant to the Fairlane Nursing Center on Joy Road. McRill said the assistant was influencing a voter, who could not read or understand the ballot, to vote for Jackie Currie for city clerk.
Tom Frazier, RN is the night supervisor at the Fairlane Nursing Center, "A lot of our residents do suffer from dementia and I don't know if they could make that type of decision. But certainly some are incapable at all of voting or making a cognitive decision. Some don't even know whose running for election. I believe a good many of them aren't competent."
He believes about 20 senior citizens at the nursing center voted Thursday. The activities worker who was in the room said she didn't see anything improper, but she didn't see everything that went on.
State Director of Elections Christopher Thomas was also in court for the hearing. He asked the judge that the election ambassadors program be taken out of the hands of Jackie Currie for the rest of the election and be placed with the Wayne County Clerk.
Understandably, the judge was furious.
Judge Mary Beth Kelly ordered that 2 receivers be put in place to supervise the absentee ballot process for the upcoming election.
The receivers will be the Wayne County Clerk and the State Director of Elections. They will supervise the counting of absentee ballots and will decide how the ambassador program will run through the rest of the election season.
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State officials said none of the absentee ballots have been counted and they will be reviewing the counting process on election night.
The two receivers that were put in place are separate from the two monitors that were already in place. The monitors were to report their findings on the absentee ballot process and the election as a whole directly to the judge.
Regarding the allegations of the dead voting, I do not yet have a link for it. However, WXYZ mentioned it briefly during the 6 0'clock hour and will follow up on it tonight at 11. I don't know if it is driving by one side or the other, but my personal hunch is that both sides are taking part. It's going to be bumpy. If the election result is close on Tuesday night, you can rest assured the losing side will challenge the results and it may not be resolved by the end of the week.