Michigan former clerk and attorney charged after alleged unauthorized access to 2020 voter data
LANSING, MI — Michigan’s attorney general on Wednesday announced charges against a former city clerk and an attorney who supported efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, alleging they accessed voting systems without authorization in a search for fraud .
Former Adams Township Clerk Stephanie Scott and her attorney, Stefanie Lambert, were charged with multiple crimes, including unauthorized access to a computer and using a computer to commit a crime.
“When elected officials and their representatives use their positions to advance baseless conspiracies, show blatant disregard for voter privacy, and violate the law in the process, it undermines the very essence of the democratic process,” Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a statement declaration. “Those who engage in such reckless behavior must be held accountable for their actions.”
The charges are the latest filed against people in multiple states who were tasked with ensuring the security of election systems but who instead allowed others to breach them in a futile search for evidence of widespread fraud in the presidential election of 2020. Multiple reviews, audits and recounts have confirmed Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump. Election secretaries in Colorado and Georgia are among those who promoted conspiracy theories about voting machines and are now being charged with allowing unauthorized access to voting systems.
According to the attorney general’s statement, Scott allegedly ignored instructions from Michigan’s secretary of state to turn over her municipality’s voting tabulation to an authorized vendor and withheld the tabulation until it was seized by state police. Michigan. The statement also alleged that Lambert, under Scott’s direction, forwarded data from the council’s poll book related to the 2020 election.
Biden won Michigan by nearly 155,000 votes over then-President Trump, a result that was confirmed by a GOP-led Senate investigation in 2021.
Lambert’s attorney, Daniel Hartman, said in a statement that his client has not broken the law and that she “remains steadfast in her efforts to bring transparency to the people’s election data, processes and procedures.” Attempts to reach Scott or an attorney for her were not immediately successful.
In a separate case, Lambert has been accused of unlawfully accessing voting equipment and has unsuccessfully sued in the past to overturn Trump’s loss in Michigan.
Scott, who oversaw elections in a small conservative town, was recalled from her position in 2023.
When it came time to prepare for her township’s November 2021 election, Scott said she was concerned about accuracy and had considered paper ballots and a hand count before deciding to use the same system.
“Frankly, I was in a moral dilemma to even call this election,” Scott told The Detroit News.
The state intervened after Scott allegedly refused to have a contractor perform preventive maintenance, including failing to perform accuracy tests. In October 2021, she was excluded from her duties.
The Hillsdale County Clerk’s Office discovered that a tablet containing key software and the operating system had been removed when they seized election tabulations and a voter terminal from county offices in preparation for a public accuracy test. It was later seized by Michigan State Police after Scott allegedly refused to turn it over.