Monica Palmer, the Republican chairwoman of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers who initially voted on Tuesday against certifying the county’s election results, then reversed her vote, said Thursday she received a phone call from President Donald Trump Tuesday evening after the meeting ended.
Palmer said she did not know how long the call lasted, saying there was a lot of stress and adrenaline that night.
“He was checking to make sure I was safe after seeing/hearing about the threats and doxxing,” Palmer wrote in a text message, referring to a firestorm of information released about her on social media.
Palmer earlier told the Free Press her family had “received multiple threats.” “The threats have been made against myself, my daughter and my husband,” she said. “Reports have been filed with Grosse Pointe Woods police and the FBI.”
Ryan Jarvi, a spokesman for Attorney General Dana Nessel, said her office had not received a referral about such threats from a police agency, but would act quickly if such a referral is made.
William Hartmann, the other Republican member of the four-person Wayne County board, also spoke with Trump, the Associated Press reported.
Both board members signed affidavits late Wednesday saying they want to rescind their votes to certify the county’s election results because they do not feel the state will follow through with an audit.
On Tuesday, when the board first took up a motion to certify the county’s election results, the vote came out 2-2 — deadlocked along partisan lines, with the Republicans opposing certification.
Palmer offered a compromise: “I would be open to a motion to certify communities other than the city of Detroit.”
An hours-long public comment period followed where the Republican members of the board were called racist for disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of Black voters.
At the end of the meeting, Jonathan Kinloch, the Democratic vice chair, offered a resolution to certify the county’s election results that called on Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to conduct a comprehensive audit of the county’s precincts that recorded unexplained discrepancies between the number of ballots recorded as cast and the number of ballots counted.
The board unanimously supported Kinloch’s resolution.
Throughout the meeting, Trump continued his quest for victories in states that he lost at the ballot box, making dubious claims to a procedural win in Michigan. He falsely claimed in a tweet that “Michigan just refused to certify the election results.” Trump appeared to have confused the Board of State Canvassers with the Wayne County Board of Canvassers. The members of the state board are scheduled to meet Monday to vote on certifying Michigan’s election results.
In response to a statement put out by Michigan Republican Party chair Laura Cox praising the Republican members of the board just minutes after they voted against certifying the county’s election results, Trump tweeted, “Well, it’s really quite simple. You just can’t have more votes than people!”
The discrepancies found in Wayne County were minor and elections experts say they are common across the country and the result of human error. They do not indicate that individuals voted multiple times or that ballots were counted more than once.
In a follow-up tweet Wednesday morning, Trump wrote, “In Detroit, there are FAR MORE VOTES THAN PEOPLE. Nothing can be done to cure that giant scam. I win Michigan!”
Detroit’s unofficial election results show roughly 250,000 Detroiters voted in November’s election. Detroit is home to about 670,000 people.
Clara Hendrickson fact-checks Michigan issues and politics as a corps member with Report for America, an initiative of The GroundTruth Project. Contact her at chendrickson@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Trump called Palmer after Wayne County Board of Canvassers meeting
