LANSING, Mich. -- State Senate Republicans who investigated Michigan's 2020 presidential election for months concluded there was no widespread or systemic fraud and urged the state attorney general to consider investigating people who have made claims about the results in Antrim County to raise money or publicity "for their own ends."
The GOP-led state Senate Oversight Committee said in a 55-page report released Wednesday that residents should be confident that the election's outcome represents the "true results." Democrat Joe Biden defeated then-President Donald Trump by about 155,000 votes, or 2.8 percentage points, in the battleground state.
Trump and his allies have pushed claims about voter fraud since the election.
"The committee strongly recommends citizens use a critical eye and ear toward those who have pushed demonstrably false theories for their own personal gain," the panel wrote days after Republican activists requested an Arizona-style "forensic" audit of the election.
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The committee's three Republicans did recommend legislation to close "real vulnerabilities" in future elections. Election-related bills are pending in the GOP-controlled Legislature, including proposed tougher photo-ID rules that the Senate passed last week and the House amended and approved Wednesday. But Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has said she will veto them if they reach her desk.
Election-night results in northern Michigan's rural Antrim County, which has roughly 23,000 residents, initially erroneously showed a local victory for Biden over Trump. But it was attributed to human error, not any problems with machines, and corrected. A hand recount turned up no signs of errors.
"We will review the report in its entirety in order to determine if a criminal investigation is appropriate," Lynsey Mukomel, spokeswoman for Attorney General Dana Nessel, said of the call to investigate people who have lied about what happened in Antrim County.
People mentioned in the report include Mike Lindell, the MyPillow creator-turned-conspiracy peddler; lawyer Matthew DePerno, who unsuccessfully sued the county on behalf of a resident, and ex-state Sen. Patrick Colbeck. The report also criticized Allied Security Operations Group, a Texas company that worked with Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani to raise claims of fraud and counting errors.
The report dismissed various claims -- that many dead people voted, that hundreds of thousands of unsolicited absentee ballots were mailed to Michigan voters, that absentee ballots were counted more than once, that tens of thousands of fraudulent absentee ballots were "dumped" at Detroit's counting center after the polls closed. Those ballots had been submitted throughout Election Day in drop boxes, in the mail and at clerks offices.
The panel's Republicans recommended that drop boxes not be used or be closed sooner than 8 p.m. on election night so that processing and tabulating the ballots they contain do not extend long into the night. Democrats have said the move would disenfranchise some voters.
"The committee's report goes into considerable detail ... and I hope the public is reassured by the security and protections already in place, motivated to support necessary reforms to make it better and grateful for our fellow citizens who do the hard work of conducting our elections," said Sen. Ed McBroom, a Republican who chairs the panel.