The U.S. Postal Service is investigating claims of alleged fraud at a post office branch in Traverse City, Michigan, after a video was posted online claiming to show a supervisor instructing employees to backdate mailed ballots with a Tuesday postmark.
Federal investigators were at the branch on Thursday, reports WWTV – WWUP-TV in Cadillac, Michigan, after a group called Project Veritas posted the video purporting to show the supervisor ordering the postmarks to be backdated.
Under Michigan law, however, ballots had to be received no later than 8 p.m. Tuesday, despite how they are postmarked. Changing the postmarks would not be relevant to the eventual results, the station reported.
Elections officials for Traverse City and the surrounding Grand Traverse County agreed that the ballots couldn't be counted, even if they had a Nov. 3 postmark, if they arrived too late, reports The Poynter Institute's PolitiFact.
"At the end of the day, doing that has no impact on the actual outcome of the election, if what the person is alleging is true," said Benjamin Marantette, a city clerk for Traverse City.
Marantette said his office got two absentee ballots after the Tuesday deadline, but neither one was postmarked Nov. 3.
"There’s nothing about the circumstances or what we’ve seen that has alarmed me," he said, adding 97% of the absentee ballots the city sent out were returned on time.
Tracy Wimmer, a spokesperson for the Michigan Department of State, also called the information in the video "entirely false."
Neil W. McCabe, the communications director for Project Veritas, however, stood behind the story, calling the video a "first-person account that was backed up by another postal employee at another post office in Traverse City. The second source would not consent to being recorded."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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