The Muskegon case may not have been a one-city problem
A new report from The Gateway Pundit claims evidence shows GBI Strategies, also known as Empower Michigan, sent more than 104 packages filled with Michigan voter registrations to 68 cities. The article argues Muskegon was not the whole story, but the place where the operation was caught. That is a serious claim, and it centers on a voter-registration fraud probe that began just weeks before the November 2020 election. The report also criticizes major Michigan media outlets for downplaying the investigation and accuses Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson of helping keep the full scope out of view. In the grand tradition of election bureaucracy, the people responsible for guarding the front door were allegedly not told much about who was jiggling the lock.
Clerks were already angry over signature guidance
The report says Michigan clerks were frustrated with Benson before the election because of her guidance on absentee-ballot envelope signature matching. The article alleges clerks were told to ignore signature matching, and it describes that guidance as contrary to election law. At the same time, according to the source, clerks were not being fully briefed on what it calls the largest voter-registration fraud investigation in the state’s history. That pairing is the heart of the complaint: local officials were being asked to run a clean election while, allegedly, a major registration-fraud probe was unfolding in the background. If true, that is not exactly the kind of transparency that inspires confidence, unless the confidence is in government paperwork multiplying like rabbits.
How the Muskegon investigation began
According to an October 26, 2020 Michigan State Police report cited by the article, Muskegon City Clerk Ann Meisch and Deputy Clerk Kimberly Young contacted the Muskegon Police Department on October 16, 2020, after seeing irregularities in voter-registration applications received both in person and by mail. The report says Meisch had received small and then larger batches of applications from a woman whose name was redacted, and investigators found that the woman worked for GBI Strategies, which also used the name Empower Michigan. Meisch said many forms looked suspicious and possibly fraudulent because numerous forms appeared to have been filled out by the same writer. She also found invalid or non-existent addresses, bad phone numbers, and signatures that did not appear to match records held by the Michigan Secretary of State.
The details that raised red flags
The police report cited by the article lists examples that drew attention. One application used an address in the 7000 block of Pine Street, and another used an address in the 600 block of Maffett Street. Meisch said those addresses did not exist in Muskegon’s house-numbering system. Another form listed 80 W. Southern Avenue, which is the address of Muskegon High School, not a residence. The report says the suspected fraudulent applications came from mailings tied to “EM” at two locations: 24225 W. 9 Mile Road in Southfield and 917 N. Opdyke in Auburn Hills. Meisch also told officers some initial forms were dropped off on October 8, 2020, by the redacted woman, who said she worked for Empower Michigan or GBI Strategies to register voters and help registered voters obtain absentee ballots.
Thousands of forms, and only 42 first turned over
The scale described in the report is what makes this more than a clerical hiccup. Meisch estimated that Empower Michigan had delivered between 8,000 and 10,000 voter-registration forms to the Muskegon City Clerk’s office. She turned over 42 suspected fraudulent applications to Officer Foster for review. Then, on October 20, 2020, which the report identifies as the deadline day for in-person voter-registration applications, the redacted woman returned to the clerk’s office with more forms. Meisch estimated that she brought an additional 2,500 forms. Muskegon police were contacted again, and Detective Logan Anderson and Captain Shawn Bride conducted a non-custodial interview. The report says the woman initially gave a fictitious date of birth and that officers learned she had a misdemeanor warrant from Madison Heights that was outside pickup range.
GBI Strategies and the unanswered scope question
The redacted woman told detectives she worked for GBI Strategies and was employed by owner Gary Bell, according to the police report cited in the article. She said she had been hired in Michigan in August 2020. The source material provided ends there, but the broader article’s claim is clear: the Muskegon case was only one visible piece of a larger registration operation involving dozens of cities and more than 100 packages. The central question is not whether one clerk noticed bad addresses on a few forms. The question is how many registrations were sent across Michigan, how many were reviewed, and why local election officials and the public were not given a fuller accounting at the time. That is the sort of question bureaucracies tend to answer slowly, usually after everyone has forgotten where the filing cabinet is.
WE’D LOVE TO HEAR YOUR THOUGHTS! PLEASE COMMENT BELOW.
Leave a Comment