Dana Nessel called the Trump DOJ's election integrity probe "absurd" and "baseless."
Now the Michigan Attorney General is demanding an audit of her own party's convention.
And when you see what investigators found inside that phone-based voting app, you'll understand why.
The App That Let Democrats Vote From Anywhere
Michigan Democrats held their 2026 endorsement convention on April 19 at Huntington Place in Detroit – over 7,000 delegates gathered to pick the party's nominees for statewide offices.
The party used a phone-based app called Election Buddy to tally votes.
One rule: you had to be physically inside the convention center to cast a ballot.
The app couldn't enforce it.
State Sen. Sylvia Santana lost her race for a Michigan State University Board of Trustees seat by 15 votes.
Her campaign spent the next two weeks digging through the voting data and filed a 53-page complaint with what they found: more than 200 ballots cast from outside Huntington Place; 302 voters not on the party's master list; 208 people sharing a phone number with at least one other voter – including six delegates tied to a single device.
That means six people could cast ballots through one phone.
The filing alleged the Michigan Democratic Party produced "material errors" in its vote-counting process – making it "difficult, if not impossible, to honor the results of the convention."
Santana's campaign says strip out the ineligible votes and she wins by 50.
Former U.S. House candidate Cathy Albro didn't hide what she did. She told the Detroit News she voted in the convention's electronic system from her home.
Nessel Admitted Her Own Votes Were Wrong
Here's where it falls apart for the Michigan Democratic Party.
Nessel – who called the Trump DOJ's demand for Wayne County election records "absurd" and vowed to fight it in court – acknowledged that the Election Buddy app miscounted her own votes at the convention and failed to correctly attribute her congressional district.
She said she notified impacted candidates and the state party chair in the days after the convention.
Then she backed Santana's call for an independent audit.
Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald, who lost her own convention race for attorney general, joined the demand.
"After reviewing the results of the MDP Endorsement Convention," McDonald said, "it became clear that votes were incorrectly recorded, people voted who were not onsite, and some votes were not recorded at all."
Michigan Republican Party Chairman Jim Runestad didn't need to say much.
"Even Dana Nessel and Sylvia Santana are demanding an audit of the Democrat convention," Runestad said. "Their own side doesn't trust what happened. Chaos. Mismanagement. And now – damage control."
https://twitter.com/MatthewNichol5/status/1681427615087988736
The Party That Lectures You on Election Integrity
The timing is the story.
While Nessel was backing calls to audit her party's own botched convention, she was simultaneously locked in a legal fight with Harmeet Dhillon – U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights – over the Trump DOJ's demand for Wayne County's 2024 election ballots.
Whitmer called that request "a poorly disguised attempt to justify more doubt and misinformation about our elections."
Nessel called it "absurd."
Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said Trump's goal was to "sow seeds of doubt about the legitimacy" of Michigan elections.
These are the same three officials overseeing a party convention where a staffer responsible for ballot tabulation appeared in the voting data as casting her ballot from Houston, Texas – while multiple witnesses placed her at Huntington Place that day. Where a vote from Montenegro turned up in the data. Where six delegates somehow shared one phone.
When Santana's campaign asked the Michigan Democratic Party to make the appeal and its findings public, spokesman Derrick Honeyman refused.
The party that spent four years telling you election integrity concerns were an attack on democracy just told its own candidates their fraud complaints are none of the public's business.
Sources:
- Victor Nava, "Michigan Dems' vote-by-phone convention results in 'material errors,'" New York Post, May 4, 2026.
- "Democrats in disarray as Michigan AG calls for recount after convention vote declared 'a mess,'" Fox News, May 4, 2026.
- "Some Democrats calling for independent audit of convention results," WKAR Public Media, May 4, 2026.
- "Michigan Democrats question party's convention results after finding 'material errors,'" Michigan Advance, May 4, 2026.
- "Hot Mess in Detroit: Michigan Democrats Stumble Through Vote-Counting Fiasco," Michigan News Source, April 20, 2026.
- "Trump administration demands 2024 election ballots from Wayne County, Michigan," Votebeat, April 20, 2026.
