Dominion contractor at Detroit counting center says thousands of ballots were scanned multiple times

A contractor for Dominion Voting Systems, who worked at Detroit's TCF Center on Election Day, has told Michigan lawmakers that she saw roughly 30,000 ballots being scanned multiple times by the counting machines.

The contractor, Mellissa Carone, who works as a freelance IT professional, made the allegations Wednesday night before a panel of Michigan House Oversight Committee members.

Carone was at the Detroit center early on Election Day, Nov. 3, until about 4 the next morning. She also returned to the site later on Nov. 4.

On November 10, Carone said in an affidavit that she witnessed "nothing but fraudulent actions take place."

"I observed numerous employees, city workers, running batches of ballots through the tabulators countless times, without discarding them first," Carone said during the Wednesday evening hearing.

She testified next to Rudy Giuliani, the personal attorney to President Trump, who has been leading most of the litigations efforts pertaining to the election. 

Carone testified that on Election Day, the vote tabulating machines would jam up to three times an hour. When the machines would jam, election officials were supposed to reset the count on the machines to ensure that no ballots were scanned more than once, explained the witness.

"Instead of discarding, they were just rescanning, rescanning, rescanning. Counting ballots nine to 10 times," Carone said. She also said there were more than 20 tabulating machines at her ballot counting center. 

The ballots were meant to be counted in batches of 50, though, Carone noted that she observed the tabulation count climb well into the hundreds multiple times throughout the day. 

"I called my manager to a specific tabulating machine and I showed him a number on it that was over 500. They shouldn’t be over 50. Ballots come in batches of 50. I said that we have a severe problem here Nick," said Carone, of her attempt to notify her manager about the issue.

"He [Nick] said, ‘Melissa I don’t want to hear that we have a problem, we are here to assist with IT, we are not here to run their election.’ And at that point, I was really frustrated and upset, I could tell what was going on," she continued. "They were cheating. It was very, very apparent."

Giuliani asked Carone at one point in the hearing why more individuals have not come forward to recount similar experiences.

"My life has been destroyed because of this," she replied. "I’ve lost family, I’ve lost friends, I’ve been threatened, my kids have been threatened, I’ve had to move, I’ve had to change my phone number, I’ve had to get rid of social media. Nobody wants to come forward. I can’t even get an actual job any more, because Democrats like to ruin your lives. That’s why."

A Republican poll challenger who also testified Tuesday evening confirmed the legitimacy of Carone's statements. She said that many poll workers didn't appear to understand what to do when ballot tabulators became jammed.

"I could tell most of these people didn’t have enough training, and they were just mindlessly doing their job," she said.

On Nov. 13, a Michigan judge wrote that Carone's account of the events that transpired at the TCF Center on Election Day "does not square with any of the other affidavits."

"The allegations are simply not credible," wrote Judge Timothy Kenny.