Jocelyn Benson’s explanation for the covered windows at Detroit’s TCF Center is facing renewed scrutiny after a document review described by Patty McMurray as the investigation’s most significant finding. More than 100 volunteers reportedly reviewed nearly one million documents from Detroit’s November 2020 election. The records were obtained through a FOIA lawsuit filed by New Jersey citizen Yehuda Miller.
According to the report, Daniel Baxter, Detroit’s top election official, announced that it was a good time for a break while workers sorted through “military” ballots. Republican poll challengers had access to another room with food, snacks, tables, and chairs. The report says Democrat poll challengers and outside agitators remained in the counting room, where they had already taken the available tables and chairs. Pizza boxes were later used to obstruct the Republican challengers’ view. Apparently, even lunch containers were drafted into the transparency debate.
Republican poll challengers were then locked out of the room where an almost exclusively Democratic paid election workforce counted 170K+ absentee ballots. “COVID” was given as the reason, according to the report. Meanwhile, election workers and others began covering the counting room’s windows with large sheets of white cardboard. McMurray says the cardboard and tape had been positioned near the front of the room, ready to cover the only windows into the counting area. Transparency, apparently, came with a lid.
Two days after the election, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson appeared on WJR with the late host Frank Beckmann. Saying, “We welcome transparency,” Benson offered this explanation: “The windows were being covered by the [Detroit] Police” because “they were being broken.” McMurray’s report disputes that account, stating that Detroit Police never covered the windows and that no windows were broken. That is a serious disagreement, not a minor argument over office furniture.
Benson also told a local television news station, “I’ll just say that if they thought they were going to stop anyone or intimidate anyone inside, then they don’t know Detroit,” Benson’s critics point to that remark, along with her reported question about whether locked-out poll workers were “STAGING” the protest, as evidence that Republican observers were being mocked rather than heard. The report also describes Benson as a former Southern Poverty Law Center board member and says she is running for governor in Michigan.
Who began covering the windows? McMurray says she received several tips from people who know David Burcar, described as the union figure in the gray T-shirt who initiated the window covering. The report says Burcar was not an “election official.” It also contrasts the oversized identification badges worn by Republican poll challengers with the small lime-green stickers Democrats reportedly wore somewhere on their clothing. At a counting site, authority and access are not exactly decorative details.
McMurray says a video shared on X helped her identify Burcar. In the account presented with the report, she says she was present and witnessed the confrontation, and maintains that threats and violence came from Democrats, not Republicans. The document review and the videos are now being used to renew questions about who controlled access to the counting room, who covered the windows, and why Benson offered the explanation she did.
