Michigan may have already certified its election results, but Republicans are very very sure Joe Biden's 154,000-vote win in the state (the Detroit News helpfully notes that's 14 times the size of Trump's huge, historic 2016 Michigan win) was totally invalid because of all the fraud. So the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee held a hearing yesterday to give Republicans a chance to lay out whatever compelling evidence they might have of that massive fraud. What happened instead was a parade of claims that have mostly been debunked or laughed out of court already, and not any real evidence that Joe Biden didn't win the election. But it gave trump fans on Twitter a chance to shout LOOK AT ALL THE FRAUD, so it must have been a very good use of seven hours, and however many coronavirus infections may result from the mostly maskless Trump supporters who said they'd definitely seen something fishy, for sure.

Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananic (D-Flint) offered this summation of the day's testimony, which, not being in a court of law, had no legal bearing on the election:

We are learning nothing new. [...] We should not continue to provide people the platform to espouse harmful and wrong conspiracy theories about the way majority-Black communities conduct their elections.

The hearings continue today, with testimony from Trump consigliere Rudy Giuliani, assuming he doesn't sweat all his hair off. And hey, at least it's in the actual state Senate, not a rented banquet hall.

Also, should we mention that the Trump campaign hasn't even requested a recount in Michigan? Consider it mentioned.

Randy Bishop, the nice Old Testament Prophet / Sourdough Prospector man in the photo up top, has a radio show, and his proof of voter fraud was that he thinks the whole thing is very, very suspicious. He wants a "full forensic audit" of election results in multiple counties, and came close to tears as he demanded,

We won't accept Biden and Harris as our president and vice president until we're given proof that nothing was illegally done in this election. [...] Show us the facts. We want to see the ballots, we want to see the poll books, we want to see the cables, the tabulators. We want to see it all.

Of course, any such audit would also be rejected by the nutters, who would continue insisting that the proof of voter fraud was being covered up, and then Bishop would again demand that Biden and state officials prove a negative. "If you do that, the truth will be shown and our land will be healed. [...] Until you do it, we're not going to buy it."

Other witnesses seemed a bit less sure of what they were angry about, but by golly, they were angry. Many of them were folks who had gone to observe the vote counting at Detroit's TCF Center, and while they had no proof of illegal voting, weren't happy about the very bad things they saw. One observer complained that workers wore Black Lives Matter shirts and rhinestones, which was very upsetting. For a hilarious review of some of the comments, check out this Twitter thread, which includes some serious evidence of hurt feelings, if not voter fraud:

Many of these folks had already submitted affidavits in a case that's already been thrown out of court, but there they were yesterday to tell their stories again.

Melissa Carone said she had been contracted by Dominion Voting Services to work at the TCF Center. Carone said she saw ballots counted multiple times and never saw a vote for Trump while watching for about 27 hours.

Her story, dramatic though it was, wasn't considered credible when it was presented as an affidavit to Judge Timothy Kenny in Wayne County Circuit Court as part of a failed attempt to stop the certification of the election.

Kenny said Carone's past affidavit of what she saw "does not square with any of the other affidavits."

"Neither Republican nor Democrat nor city officials substantiate her version of events," Kenny ruled. "The allegations simply are not credible."

Then there was the Mystery of the 120-Year-Old Voters, which keeps getting traction on the interwebs, and was repeated by several of the GOP observers yesterday as well. There's actually a simple explanation, according to former Michigan elections director Chris Thomas, who said in an affidavit for that earlier case that the

voters in question had been verified before their ballots were delivered to the center.

"Inspectors at the TCF Center did not have access to voters' birth dates," Thomas, who worked as a consultant in Detroit for the election, said in his affidavit. "Therefore, due to the fact that the software (but not the law or the Secretary of State) requires the field be completed to move to the next step, 1/1/1900 was used as a placeholder.

All standard, not a mystery, and the voters' actual identity records include their actual birthdates. Stop freaking out. But that's what a frauder would want you to believe, isn't it!!!!!

Same deal for the supposedly mysterious delivery of a truckload of ballots at 4 a.m. on Nov. 4: They were 16,000 legal votes that had been verified by Detroit's City Clerk's office, simply delivered in the wee hours because it takes some time to pick up all the votes from all the sites around the city. Jesus, you people.

As to what the hearing was supposed to accomplish, that's easy: It was an Airing of Grievances that won't change a thing, because the Michigan legislature is a lawmaking body, not a judicial one.

The legislature cannot file voter fraud charges or prosecute voter fraud claims, and when it comes to the presidential election, state law stipulates that the political party of the winning candidate picks its slate of electors.

State Sen. Pete Lucidio, a Republican, reassured a grumpy speaker that if there's evidence of fraud, it needs to be taken to the attorney general for possible investigation. Michigan AG Dana Nessel tweeted yesterday that yes, credible claims will get investigated, but also added a question of her own:

But she's a Democrat, and that means the entire system is rigged, don't you see?

We'll be sure to let you know if Rudy Giuliani delivers any earth-shaking evidence today that Michigan's vote was completely fraudulent. Barring that, we'll find some stupid animal videos and watch them instead.

[Detroit News / Detroit Free Press / MLive / "Sandwich Breathe" (@TepidButterASMR) on Twitter]

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