Race Card Played Against Black Republican Secretary of State Candidate Kristina Karamo!

A guest post by Becky Behrends, M.D. and Vice President of Research for Michigan Citizens for Election Integrity (MC4EI.com)

Here we go again! Now the race card is being played against Republican Secretary of State candidate Kristina Karamo by the reliably unreliable media and the leftist groups like the NAACP they serve over the lawsuit she filed against Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey.

The president of the Detroit branch of the NAACP, the Rev. Wendell Anthony, said: “This lawsuit is geared only towards the city of Detroit, a majority African American city. It is designed to stop the effort to mobilize and drive voter participation. It is targeted by its content and racist by its intent. It is intended to disenfranchise black people. There is no evidence of voter fraud. There is no pattern or practice of mail-in ballot abuse. It is simply a lawsuit in search of a violation.”

Karamo, with help from black female lawyer Alexandria Taylor, has filed a last-minute lawsuit against the City of Detroit, alleging improper and illegal practices with regard to the handling of absentee ballots.

Specifically, the lawsuit calls for halting the “use of absentee ballots that are obtained without proper identification of the voter.” The suit calls into question the use of Relia-Vote machines which are used to verify signatures on ballots but which are not endorsed or provided for by Michigan election law. There has been no public transparency as to how these machines are used in signature verification. Do they automatically check signatures? If so, what is the sensitivity threshold for determining what a signature is? If not properly specified, a stray mark could be construed as “a signature.” Or are the signatures subject to “visual inspection” by election workers? Is there a public accuracy test for these machines with bipartisan assessment?

The whole issue of signature verification of absentee ballots exploded in the 2020 general election when a judge ruled that Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson violated the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) with her signature verification guidance to clerks. She instructed them to “presume” absentee ballot signatures were valid if they had “redeeming qualities”. Judge Christopher Murray said .” Nowhere in the state’s election law has the Legislature indicated that signatures are to be presumed valid….Policy determinations like the one at issue- which places a thumb on the scale in favor of a signature’s validity- should be made pursuant to properly promulgated rules under the APA.” This requires months of public notices, drafts, public comments, and hearings. This was not done.

In addition, the lawsuit calls into question accepting absentee ballots that were deposited via drop boxes that were not effectively monitored.

What is “effective monitoring”? If surveillance videos are not being observed in real-time, is that “effective”? It has been acknowledged that the drop box videos in the Detroit 2020 election were not monitored in real-time. Are surveillance videos considered “effective” if they sit on the shelves of legislators for over a year with no viewing of their contents? It took a third party (private citizen) to insist that these videos needed to be examined. Secretary of State Benson and Attorney General Dana Nessel have not investigated the findings of those who reviewed these videos, so they are not in a position to say that illegal activity or fraud was not committed. The burden of proof should be on them.

It seems entirely appropriate that these issues should be debated, investigated, and even litigated.

But, the kicker in this lawsuit was the charge that the lawsuit represents “blatant racism” reminiscent of the Jim Crow era in which black citizens were disenfranchised. And in the nation’s largest majority-black city. Why pick on Detroit was their outcry? “Why not Petoskey, Mi?” the judge asked.

That is like asking Willie Sutton in 1933 why he robbed banks. He replied, “Because that’s where the money is.”

One would think that a judge would not have to ask why Detroit was opposed to Petoskey. It has nothing to do with racism. It has to do with Detroit’s well-known history of corruption. Remember the mayoral election race in 2005? Hip Hop mayor Kwame Kilpatrick had a “come from behind victory” despite the fact that his too numerous to count corrupt activities were well known. His challenger, black Detroiter Freeman Hendrix, was even declared the winner in a landslide initially by WDIV Channel 4. Then, late-night absentee ballots came rolling in! (Hmmm, shades of 2020?) Surprise, surprise, right?! Hendrix later said, “there has been enough evidence to raise legitimate questions about how the election was conducted and how the ballots were counted.” Was African American Hendrix a racist in saying this?

Karamo is black. Her attorney is black. One of the plaintiffs is a black resident of Detroit. Their position is that if the voting process is not secure or follows reliable and transparent procedures, it actually disenfranchises the citizens of Detroit – which is, well, racist!

Dan Hartmann, the attorney for the plaintiffs, said, in reference to the attorney representing Detroit Clerk Winfrey, “I’m tired of being called a racist by Mr. Fink!” (David Fink, representing the City of Detroit).

Hartman blasted the dirty defense lawyer Mr.David Fink, who’s representing the Detroit City Clerk. “To characterize me as trying to disenfranchise the military voter is offensive!” he said.

“I’m tired of being called a racist by Mr. Fink,” Hartman told the judge regarding the comments made by the far-left lawyer David Fink who claimed the lawsuit was “blatant racism” and “reminiscent of Jim Crow-era voter disenfranchisement.”

A frustrated Hartman, who was sick of the judge and the defense lawyer treating him like a punching bag, told the judge, “I’m tired of Mr. Fink saying I’m trying to disenfranchise the heroes in the military when I’m trying to secure this election!”

So, which is it? It seems appropriate to judge the case based on its merits with a proper investigation of the facts in the light of true transparency. To even claim that folks are using the “race card” to justify their positions is now considered deeply racist in itself. Enough!

In the words of J.R. Dunn:

“For too long, too many blacks have been collapsing into whimpers every time somebody mentions blackmail, blackouts, or black markets. It’s a pathetic epilogue to the heroism and grandeur of the civil rights movement. It’s past time this adolescent posturing was put aside.”