Black Detroit voters sue Trump campaign over effort to invalidate election results

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News ID: 49386
Publish Date: 20:27 - 22 November 2020
Sunday, 22 November 2020 (YJC) _ A group of Black voters in Detroit announced they are suing President Trump.

Black Detroit voters sue Trump campaign over effort to invalidate election resultsA group of Black voters in Detroit announced they are suing President Donald Trump and his campaign, alleging the targeted effort to overturn the election repeats one of the "worst abuses in our nation's history" by attempting to disenfranchise African American voters.

Specifically, the suit takes issue with the campaign's effort to overturn the results of the election in Michigan by blocking the certification of results in Wayne County, home to Detroit, and attempting to "intimidate" and "coerce" state and local officials into replacing electors.

"Central to this strategy is disenfranchising voters in predominately Black cities," the suit alleges. "Repeating false claims of voter fraud, which have been thoroughly debunked, Defendants are pressuring state and local officials in Michigan not to count votes from Wayne County, Michigan (where Detroit is the county seat), and thereby disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters."

The president met Friday at the White House with lawmakers from Michigan, and made personal calls to two Republican members on the Wayne County Board of Canvassers. The board members then tried to rescind certification of the election results, but the secretary of state's office has said that is not permitted.

After nearly two hours in the White House, the Michigan delegation, including Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and House Speaker Lee Chatfield, seemed to rebuff Trump's efforts, saying in a statement that "the candidates who win the most votes win elections and Michigan's electoral votes."

The president and his allies have for weeks been derisively accusing residents of Detroit and Philadelphia, which have large minority populations, of orchestrating a massive election fraud -- a baseless claim for which they have produced no meaningful evidence. The complaint pours through many of those statements, which include tweets and public statements, as evidence of the effort.

In a statement to ABC News, the Trump campaign did not specifically address the claims made by the group of Black voters in Detroit.

Source: ABC

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