On December 1, the BOE, which is under the auspices of Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D), sent a memo to all clerks about recounts and the “release of voting equipment.”
One section, titled, “E-Pollbook laptops and flash drives,” read:
The EPB software and associated files must be deleted from all devices by the seventh calendar day following the final canvass and certification of the election (November 30, 2020) unless a petition for recount has been filed and the recount has not been completed, a post-election audit is planned but has not yet been completed, or the deletion of the data has been stayed by an order of the court or the Secretary of State.
That raised the ire of state Rep. Matt Hall (R) and state Sen. Ed McBroom (R), chairmen of their respective oversight committees, who indicated the memo violated an order by House Speaker Lee Chatfield (R) and Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey (R) for election data to be preserved.
Chatfield and Shirkey issued a directive on November 6 “which served as notice of the Michigan Legislature’s plans to conduct an inquiry into the general election,” a release from Hall said.