Imagine a health inspector conducting a “random” restaurant safety audit that somehow manages to skip McDonald’s and Burger King—the two busiest establishments in town, and imagine they had the longest history of violations. Then imagine the health inspector was inspecting his own work. Then the inspector announces that all restaurants passed with flying colors.
Would you trust that audit?
Yet this scenario mirrors what happened with Michigan’s 2024 post-election audit. Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s office announced in October 2025—ten months after the election—that Michigan’s ballot counting achieved 99.97% accuracy. Impressive. But their “random” sample conspicuously excluded Detroit and Troy, the largest cities in Michigan’s two most populous counties, despite Detroit’s notorious election administration challenges.
When randomness becomes suspiciously convenient, trust evaporates.
The audit took ten months to complete and publish—an extraordinary delay that national election security experts Susan Greenhalgh and Dr. David Jefferson called “inadequate” and lacking “transparency” in their August 2025 analysis of swing-state audits. Michigan’s 2020 audit required only five months. Why did 2024 take twice as long?
Delays matter.
Risk-limiting audits exist precisely to provide swift statistical assurance when public scrutiny peaks—immediately after elections. Publishing results ten months later, when news cycles have moved on and memories have faded, defeats the purpose. In a swing state with controversial election administration, such delays amplify rather than alleviate distrust.
But timing represents only one problem. The audit examined whether Michigan counts ballots accurately—it did—while ignoring whether those ballots came from eligible voters at legitimate addresses, whether signatures on 2,081,265 mail-in ballots matched registration records, and whether Michigan’s voter databases comply with federal maintenance requirements.
Hellbound and Down 