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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Spenser Mestel

The US state that fought back after Republicans tried to rig its elections

People chant ‘Stop the count’ in Detroit, Michigan, as absentee ballots are counted on 4 November 2020.
People chant ‘Stop the count’ in Detroit, Michigan, as absentee ballots are counted on 4 November 2020. Photograph: Kent Nishimura/Rex/Shutterstock

In recent months, Michigan should have been a hotbed for attempts to rig elections, like it was in 2011. That year, the Republican-led legislature distorted the voting maps so that the GOP was able to win nine of Michigan’s 14 congressional seats despite never earning more than 50.5% of the vote statewide.

A decade later, as the redistricting cycle has come around again, the dynamics are just as toxic. The battleground state broke for Joe Biden by fewer than 155,000 votes, and the Republican-controlled legislature has fought endlessly with the Democratic governor about election “audits”, voter IDs and absentee ballots.

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