The Tabulator That Was Never Missing

How Michigan Officials Raided Adams Township, Admitted Their Own Crimes, And Still Put The Clerk On Trial

In a Hillsdale County courtroom in July of 2025, the mask slipped.

Under oath, the Director of the Michigan Bureau of Elections and the Hillsdale County Clerk admitted facts that, in any honest system, would have ended the prosecution of Adams Township Clerk Stephanie Scott and begun criminal investigations into the state and county officials who targeted her.

Instead, those same officials still hold power, the clerk who followed the law still faces felony charges, and the only charge that actually involved the voting machine, Count Five, has already collapsed for lack of probable cause.

To understand how we got here, you have to follow the paper trail, the testimony, and the raids. You also have to look at what the law requires from the people who carry a badge and the people who sign arrest warrants, then ask why those duties only seem to run in one direction.

The First Betrayal, A Policy Memo Against the Law

After the 2020 election, Adams Township used Hart tabulators and electronic pollbook data, just like many other jurisdictions in Michigan.

Michigan law is very clear on what happens next.

Michigan Compiled Law 168.81 requires that ballots and election materials be preserved for at least 22 months. Federal law, 52 USC section 20701, requires preservation of all records connected to a federal election for the same period. Those statutes are not suggestions, they are criminal law. Destroying those records early can itself be a crime.

Yet in 2021, Michigan Bureau of Elections Director Jonathan Brater issued statewide instructions that clerks were to delete data from voting machines and electronic pollbooks. When asked in court where this power came from, he did not point to statute. He pointed to his own authority to issue administrative instructions and policy.

Under cross examination, Brater admitted that his deletion directive was not grounded in any statute, that it was administrative policy, not law. He also acknowledged that clerks were required to follow Michigan election law, including the 22 month retention requirement, even as his own directives contradicted that law.

In other words, he admitted two things at once.

One, he knew the law required preservation of election records.

Two, he ordered the deletion of those records anyway, on the strength of a policy memo that had no statutory backing.

That is the foundation of this entire case.

Stephanie Scott refused to delete data that state and federal law required her to preserve. For that refusal, she was portrayed as a threat to democracy, stripped of access to state systems, and eventually charged with felonies.

Adams Township Starts Doing Its Job

While the Bureau of Elections was issuing deletion instructions, Adams Township was doing something that Michigan law actually requires.

Under MCL 168.515, township clerks have a broad duty to investigate and correct voter registration records. The statute allows clerks to conduct a house to house canvass or use any other means that seem expedient to verify the correctness of the rolls.

Scott began to investigate obvious problems in the Qualified Voter File, including incorrect and duplicate registrations. She believed, correctly, that the same data the state was telling her to delete was necessary to prove the problems in the voter rolls and to fulfill her statutory duty to correct them.

She also believed, again correctly, that deleting that data early would violate both federal and state record retention laws.

That was the real conflict. Not a clerk refusing to follow some vague policy, but a clerk refusing to violate criminal record retention statutes in order to satisfy a policy memo from Lansing.

Raid One, No Warrant, No Court Order, Just Bureau Power

What happened next did not look like the rule of law. It looked like a power move.

Acting under the instructions of Jonathan Brater, Hillsdale County Clerk Marney Kast and her then deputy, now County Clerk, Abraham Dane went to Adams Township and physically removed election materials from the township hall. They were assisted by two Adams Township elected officials, Treasurer Pat Williams and Trustee Jason Griffith, who chose to side with the state and county against their own clerk and township.

There was no warrant. There was no court order. There was no statutory citation that gave the county the right to simply walk into a township and seize ballots and election records from the township clerk who was the lawful custodian.

Later, under oath, Dane admitted that he removed Adams Township ballots from an election that was not even at issue, that custody of those ballots belonged to the township clerk, and that he could not point to any Michigan law that specifically authorized him to take them.

He did not have to say the words I committed a crime. His answers matched the elements of unlawful seizure and misconduct in office on their own.

The state and county raided Adams Township by policy memo, not by law.

But they missed something.

After the first seizure, Kast and Dane realized they had a problem.

They did not have the tablet.

Adams Township officials, anticipating trouble after the first raid and determined to comply with record retention law, had secured the tablet separately. They understood that the machine still contained cast vote records and other data that were part of the election record. Destroying or handing that data over for wiping would put them in violation of federal law, not to mention Michigan election law.

When county officials came back looking for the tablet, they were told no.

The Adams Township Supervisor and Clerk informed them that if they wanted the tabulator, the Michigan State Police would need a warrant. Administrative power had already been abused once. It was not going to be used again without judicial review.

That demand changed everything.

Raid Two, Now They Bring the State Police

Unable to rely on an unlawful administrative seizure a second time, the state and county turned to the courts.

A search warrant was obtained and signed by Hillsdale District Judge Megan Stiverson. That warrant authorized the Michigan State Police to enter Adams Township and search for the supposedly missing tablet.

Thus began the second raid, sanctioned by a County Judge .

The same tablet that the township had secured in order to comply with record retention law was now treated as contraband. The same township that had already been stripped of election materials without a warrant now faced armed officers arriving under color of law, based on the story that the township clerk was hiding the machine.

Years later, Judge Stiverson would preside over the preliminary examination in People of the State of Michigan v Stephanie Scott and Stefanie Lambert. She would hear months of testimony, review thousands of pages of documents, and then issue written findings and an order that dismissed Count Five entirely.

On Count Five, the tabulator tampering charge, she found no probable cause that Scott concealed, destroyed, damaged, or unlawfully withheld the tablet under the Michigan election tampering statute. The charge was dismissed at the preliminary stage.

The same judge who had signed the warrant that sent State Police into Adams Township to seize a supposedly hidden tabulator later admitted there was no evidence, even at the low threshold of probable cause, that Scott had committed the tabulator crime.

The tabulator was never missing. It was secured, exactly where it was supposed to be, in the custody of the clerk. The story was missing, and the law was missing.

The raid remained.

The Sheriff Who Knew And Stood Aside

There was one more player in this story, one whose duty was not to policy memos but to the law and to the people of Hillsdale County.

Sheriff Scott Hodshire.

During the first warrantless seizure, and again as the state moved to obtain a warrant for the tabulator, the Adams Township Supervisor called and texted the Sheriff. Those messages, which still exist, show that the Sheriff was told very clearly what was happening. He was invited Oct. 11 to the township meeting referenced in the probable cause charges and failed to appear. He was then sent the videos on Oct. 18th of that meeting, admitted viewing them and concluded their was no election fraud in Hillsdale County.

Days later County and Local officials entered Adams Township Hall and took election materials from the clerk without a warrant.

He was told that the township believed those actions were unlawful and that the integrity of their election records was under attack.

He was told that county officials were now coming back with the Michigan State Police, under a warrant, to seize the tabulator that Adams Township had secured in order to comply with state and federal law.

The Supervisor warned him that election fraud and mishandling of records were taking place and asked him to protect the township.

The Sheriff knew. He had notice that powerful officials were interfering with election records and that his own constituents were asking for protection.

He chose not to act.

He did not challenge the warrantless seizure by state and county officials. He did not step in to question why election materials were being removed from their lawful custodian without judicial process. He did not stand between the State Police and the tablet when the second raid came.

In those moments, his oath to preserve the peace and to preserve to all persons their rights, including the right of a township to have its elections run according to law, gave way to silence.

The Courtroom, What They Admitted

When the case finally reached a full preliminary examination, the courtroom became the one place where everyone had to stop spinning and start answering.

Jonathan Brater admitted that his authority was to issue instructions and policy, not to override statutes. He admitted that there was no law that specifically allowed him to jail a clerk for not reassuring him in advance that she would follow his instructions, and he acknowledged that clerks remained bound by Michigan election law, including record retention.

That is another way of saying that he knew his deletion directive did not have statutory backing, yet he issued it anyway, and used it as the basis to attack a clerk who followed the law instead of his policy.

Abraham Dane admitted that he personally took Adams Township ballots that were not his to take, that custody belonged to the township clerk, and that he could not cite any Michigan statute that gave him authority to remove those ballots.

He also acknowledged that the electronic pollbook flash drives contained official election information that state retention schedules say must be preserved for two years or until any investigation is complete, even as he helped enforce Bureau instructions that deleted that data.

In plain language, the Director of Elections admitted he ordered destruction of records that law required to be preserved, without statutory authority, and the County Clerk admitted he seized ballots without legal authority and participated in deleted electronic records that should have been kept.

Those are not rumors. They are sworn admissions.

Here is a link to our previous article with the Transcripts.

The Count That Collapsed, The Counts That Remain

In her written order after the preliminary examination, Judge Stiverson made two critical choices.

On the one hand, she accepted the state’s theory that sharing electronic pollbook data with a legal team and a forensic expert could be treated as unauthorized computer access. On that basis, she bound over several computer related charges, along with a common law malfeasance count and a misdemeanor failure to follow a supposed lawful order from the Bureau.

On the other hand, she dismissed Count Five entirely, the only count that was actually tied to the tabulator that had served as the dramatic centerpiece of the raids.

She found no probable cause that Scott had concealed, tampered with, or unlawfully withheld the tabulator under Michigan election law.

So the public story, the one about a rogue clerk hiding a machine, did not survive even the low bar of a preliminary hearing. The legal fiction that justified a warrant, a raid, and years of political rhetoric simply collapsed.

What remained on the record was this.

Adams Township had been raided first without a warrant, then again, with a warrant, by the County.

Election materials had been seized from the township clerk without statutory authority, by the County.

Policy memos/emails had been used as if they had more power than law.

The Sheriff had been told all of this and refused to intervene.

The only clerk who refused to delete records that law required her to keep was the only one facing trial.

What The Prosecutor And Sheriff Are Now Obligated To Do

At this point, the question is no longer whether something unlawful happened. The testimony has already supplied the elements.

The question is whether the law in Hillsdale County will be applied upward as well as downward.

Several categories of criminal conduct are now staring the County Prosecutor and the County Sheriff in the face.

1. Misconduct in office. Michigan still recognizes this common law felony for corrupt behavior by a public officer in the exercise of official duties. Using an office to carry out an unlawful seizure, to order destruction of records that law requires to be preserved, or to participate in raids that have no statutory basis is exactly what this crime was written to address.

2. Election crimes under Michigan election law. The same statutes the Attorney General cites against Scott also prohibit undue possession and concealment of ballots and voting machines. Those provisions do not cease to apply when the person obtaining undue possession works in a county office or a state bureau. When state and county officials physically remove ballots and equipment from a township clerk without a warrant or court order, that is undue possession. When they pressure clerks statewide to delete cast vote records and electronic pollbooks prematurely, that moves toward concealment and destruction of records that election law protects.

3. Federal election record crimes. Under fifty two U S C sections 20701 and twenty seven zero two, any officer who fails to retain and preserve federal election records for the required period, or who steals, destroys, conceals, mutilates, or alters them, can be prosecuted in federal court. If state and county officials ordered or carried out the deletion of records that federal law required Scott to keep, that conduct is not only a local scandal, it is a potential federal offense.

Specific to Michigan Election Law

4. Willful neglect of duty, under MCL 750.478 When a duty is imposed by law on an officer, every willful neglect to perform that duty, where no other penalty is provided, is a crime. A Director of Elections who refuses to follow record retention statutes, a County Clerk who participates in warrantless seizures and deletion of records, and a Sheriff who does nothing when told election records are being mishandled and seized without proper authority, all fall within that definition.

5. MCL 168.941 Peace officers, duty to institute proceedings, it is hereby made the duty of any police sheriff or other peace officer, present and having knowledge of any violation of any of the provisions of this act , to fore with institute criminal proceedings for the punishment’s of such offender.

6. MCL 168.940 Prosecuting attorney, duty to prosecute it is herby made the duty of every prosecuting attorney, when he shall receive credible information that nay such offense has been committed, to cause the same to be prosecuted.

The County Prosecutor cannot bring federal charges. The County Sheriff cannot file an information in federal court. But both have a duty to preserve evidence, to investigate, and to refer credible evidence of federal crimes to the proper authorities. However, that does not prohibit them from upholding their own statuary obligations.

They also have a duty to apply state law evenly.

If computer crime statutes can be used to indict a township clerk and her attorney for sharing election data with a defense expert in order to comply with law and investigate fraud, then those same statutes, along with the misconduct, neglect, and election protection provisions, can and must be applied to the officials who seized, deleted, and misused those records.

Anything less is an admission that the criminal code in Hillsdale County is not a set of laws, but a weapon reserved for the powerless.

The Real Case On Trial

From the beginning, the case of People v Scott and Lambert has been framed as a test of whether a clerk can go rogue and undermine an election.

The facts show something very different.

The clerk did what the law required.

The state did what the law forbade.

The county joined them.

The Sheriff watched and stood aside.

The court threw out the one count that matched the public narrative.

What is really on trial is not Stephanie Scott. It is the integrity of Michigan’s election system, and the courage of local authorities in Hillsdale County to enforce the law against their own when they are the ones who break it.

The admissions are on the record. The raids are a matter of history. The oaths are written in black and white.

The only thing left to see is whether the people who swear to uphold the law will enforce it, or whether they will continue to use it as a shield for those in power and a hammer for those who dared to obey it.

in liberty,
The Hillsdale Conservatives