Widespread change has struck the group of election officials whose job is to certify Tuesday’s results, igniting concerns about whether the new class is willing to sign off the same way county canvassers in Michigan did four years ago.

A weeks-long analysis by The Detroit News found 55% of the 332 county canvassers in Michigan were not serving in November 2020 when boards in all 83 counties approved the outcome despite Republican then-President Donald Trump’s unsuccessful attempt to overturn his loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

The turnover has been driven by Republicans. While 48% of the Democratic canvassers are new since 2020, 63% — nearly two out of every three — are new on the GOP side, according to The News’ analysis.

The numbers point to a Michigan Republican Party that’s been focused on false claims of widespread fraud aimed at the might interfere with the election process this fall, according to Democrats. But Republicans, such as Kalamazoo County canvasser Robert Froman, said the analysis demonstrates an increased and renewed interest in how elections are administered.

“Many people within the framework or the ideology of the Republican Party have realized that they have been sitting in their living rooms way too long, and the country that they know and love is being stolen out from under them,” Froman said. “And they’re not willing to sit in their living rooms any longer.”

Froman, a 72-year-old retired postal service employee from Oshtemo Township, is one of the 105 new Republican county canvassers who are serving in 2024 but weren’t in their positions in 2020.

Each county in Michigan has a four-person canvassing board, featuring two Republicans and two Democrats, in charge of approving election tallies before they’re forwarded to the state for final authorization. The panels rarely get attention and, former Michigan elections director Chris Thomas said, their members often held the posts for many years at a time, making vast changes like what’s occurred recently unusual.

Concerns about the 2020 election spurred Froman to get more actively involved in politics, he said. Froman started attending Kalamazoo County Republican Party meetings and volunteering with an entity named Check My Vote, which has been trying to examine and verify addresses used by Michigan residents in the state’s official list of registered voters.

Froman, whom Republicans nominated to serve on the Kalamazoo County canvassing board and whose term began last year, said he’s personally checked tens of thousands of voters’ addresses. He said he “most definitely” believes the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

Asked if he would certify the 2024 presidential election if it unfolded the same way the 2020 one did, Froman replied, “No. And that’s why I’m there.”

Froman is one of four so-called “county leaders” or “trainers” who have been working with Check My Vote to investigate the state’s registered voter list and who have recently gotten county canvassing positions. The others are Bonnie Kellogg in Muskegon County, Maureen Hillary in Clinton County and Ron Palmgren in Genesee County, according to a list of “county leaders” in a July 2023 announcement from the Michigan Republican Party.

The belief system that there was widespread fraud in 2020 and a series of attempts to reject results in Michigan over the last four years have some election officials in Michigan expecting that Republicans on some local canvassing boards might try to block the certification process in November if Trump loses to likely Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

County canvassing boards must have a bipartisan 3-1 or 4-0 vote to certify election results and advance them to the Board of State Canvassers, another panel comprised of two Republicans and two Democrats.

“At this point, shockingly, it wouldn’t surprise me to see several counties deadlock,” said Thomas, who served as Michigan’s elections director for more than three decades.

‘I do worry’

Each of Michigan’s 83 county canvassing boards has the responsibility of reviewing the local vote totals and reporting the results to the Board of State Canvassers, according to a manual published by the Michigan Bureau of Elections.

The county boards, featuring two Republican slots and two Democratic slots, have 14 days following Election Day to certify the results for each of their precincts.

The canvassers serve staggered four-year terms, are nominated by their local political party and are picked, from among the party nominees, by the local board of commissioners. However, there is no official state list that tracks who sits on the key elections boards across Michigan.

The News compiled the names of Michigan’s county canvassers — those serving now and those serving in 2020 — through questionnaires sent to county clerks in June and July and examining board member lists that were posted on some county websites.

Boards with vacancies are considered by The News to have new members because the positions are expected to be filled before the November election.

Of Michigan’s 83 counties, 11 have completely new canvassing boards with four new members from 2020: Alger, Arenac, Clare, Dickinson, Iosco, Mackinac, Manistee, Montmorency, Muskegon, Roscommon and Wayne — the state’s most populous county and the site of a brief November 2020 certification deadlock.

In Iosco County, which is located in northeastern Michigan and has a population of about 25,000, Clerk Nancy Huebel said one past board member died, two resigned for personal reasons, and one, Democrat Patti Casey, wasn’t reappointed.

In neighboring Arenac County, Janice Grier, 69, of Standish said Democrats were having trouble finding people to serve on the canvassing board a couple of years ago, so she stepped up. In 2020, 67% of the votes in the county went to Trump.

Grier said she hasn’t seen anything that would make her concerned about the county board not certifying the upcoming presidential election, but she’s not so certain about elsewhere in Michigan.

“I do worry about other parts of the state,” Grier said.

Protect the vote?

Over the last four years, there have been three examples of canvassers in Michigan at least initially refusing to certify an election.

Most recently, in the spring, two Republicans on the Delta County canvassing board in the Upper Peninsula voted against certifying a May 7 recall election in which three incumbent Republican county commissioners lost their seats. However, days later, they

changed course and approved the results.

“I am doing my best to protect the votes of all citizens of Delta County and to ensure free and fair elections by bringing transparency and reassurance to all Delta County citizens,” one of the Republican canvassers, Bonnie Hakkola, said at the time.

Hakkola resigned from the board afterward.

The other Republican who initially voted against certification, LeeAnne Oman, was serving as an alternate for an absent GOP canvasser, Sema Deeds.

Jonathan Brater, Michigan’s elections director, sent a letter to the Delta County canvassers on May 16, telling them that under the Michigan Constitution and state law, they had “a clear and nondiscretionary duty to certify election results based solely on election returns.”

“The Constitution and Michigan election law do not authorize boards of county canvassers to refuse to certify election results based on claims made by third parties of alleged election irregularities or a general desire to conduct election investigations,” Brater wrote in the letter.

In a statement in May, Attorney General Dana Nessel said “defying the will of the people based on conjecture, dissatisfaction in the results or any other reason not based on Michigan law” will not be tolerated.

“While the Delta County Board ultimately met their obligations, and as a result have avoided the legal consequences, let this serve as a warning to all of the boards of canvassers across the state that the willful neglect of your duties is a criminal act,” added Nessel, a Democrat.

Canvassers’ role

Asked about the statements from Nessel and Brater about the Delta County canvassers, new Republican Kalamazoo County canvasser Froman said he has a duty to ensure there is a free and fair election.

“I am not going to do anything that’s illegal,” Froman told The News.

Other new canvassers interviewed by The News in recent weeks made similar remarks.

Ron Palmgren, a Republican canvasser in Genesee County, has also served as a county leader for Check My Vote. Asked if the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump, Palmgren said he has “no idea whether it was stolen or not.”

Biden won Michigan’s election by 154,000 votes or 3 percentage points, 51%-48%. The outcome has been upheld by audits, a series of court rulings and an investigation by a Republican-controlled state Senate committee.

Palmgren, a 76-year-old retiree from Burton, said he views his role as a canvasser as being an “impartial arbiter.”

“Based on my experience so far, there is no investigatory process,” Palmgren said of his responsibilities. “It is strictly looking at the election results provided by all of the municipalities and making sure that all of the processes that were in place were followed.”

Likewise, Jim Kargol, a 69-year-old from Petoskey who serves on the Emmet County Board of Canvassers, said he doesn’t believe there’s been fraud in local elections, but he questions what has happened in other places, such as Detroit.

Kargol mentioned a van dropping off loads of ballots in the night during the 2020 presidential election in Detroit, a Democratic stronghold. He appeared to be referencing about 16,000 ballots that had been delivered to the center where absentee ballots were being tallied in Detroit in the early morning hours of Nov. 4. The ballots had been verified by city Clerk Janice Winfrey’s staff prior to delivery in a process prescribed by Michigan law, said Thomas, Michigan’s former elections director who helped oversee voting in Detroit.

“I really think there was some foolishness that went on,” said Kargol, a Republican.

Canvassing troubles

After the 2020 presidential election on Nov. 17, 2020, Wayne County’s Republican then-canvassers Monica Palmer and William Hartmann questioned precincts in Detroit where the number of ballots cast and the number of votes tracked didn’t match and initially voted against certifying the county’s results.

But later in the meeting, they changed course and supported certifying the election based on the condition that an audit take place of some precincts within Wayne County.

Minutes after the meeting, Trump and Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel called Palmer and Hartmann, and Trump personally pressured them not to sign the certification document, according to recordings previously reported on by The Detroit News.

“We’ve got to fight for our country,” Trump said during the phone call, according to the recordings. “We can’t let these people take our country away from us.”

The Michigan Bureau of Elections determined the vote that occurred and the signatures of the chair or vice chair of the four-member canvassing board and the county clerk were the only things necessary to advance the certification to the Board of State Canvassers.

Hartmann died in 2021, and Republican Party officials didn’t renominate Palmer to serve on the canvassing board when her term concluded in 2021. The new Republican canvassers are Katherine Riley and Robert Boyd.

Riley, who’s now chair of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, according to the county’s website, didn’t respond Monday to a request for comment.

There are also two new Democrats on the board, Richard W. Preuss and Frank Woods Jr.

Jonathan Kinloch, a Democrat who was serving on the Wayne County canvassing board in 2020 and is now a Wayne County commissioner, said the question of whether boards will certify the results this fall is at the forefront of his mind.

Wayne County Republicans initially denied that they were going to attempt to block certification in 2020, Kinloch said. Where there’s smoke, people should be concerned, he said.

“I think this is a tactic of theirs to create chaos,” Kinloch said.

Legal backstops

If a county canvassing board refuses to certify an upcoming election, Michigan has legal “backstops” in place to deal with the development, Thomas said. But such an attempt could also further undermine people’s faith in electoral outcomes, he acknowledged.

Under state processes, if a county board fails to determine a result, the job moves to the Board of State Canvassers, according to the Michigan Bureau of Elections.

The county board is supposed to immediately deliver all records and other information, including all necessary forms, to the Board of State Canvassers. A court could get involved to make sure that step happens.

When the 2020 presidential election reached the state board, one of the two Republicans on the statewide panel abstained: Norm Shinkle of Ingham County. But the other Republican, Aaron Van Langevelde, cast the deciding vote with the two Democrats in favor of certification.

At the time, Shinkle called for the Republican-led Legislature to conduct an in-depth review of election procedures, and he promoted theories about problems in Wayne County.

“I do not plan on voting for certification. I believe Wayne County’s certification needs to be looked at,” Shinkle said before abstaining.

Van Langevelde and Shinkle are both no longer on the board. They’ve been replaced by Tony Daunt and Richard Houskamp.

Daunt and Houskamp voted to certify the 2022 gubernatorial election, which Republican Tudor Dixon lost to Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer by about 10 percentage points. Daunt also has openly criticized Trump for spreading “lies” that the 2020 election was rigged.

Staff Writer Beth LeBlanc contributed.