“The world was upside down. We had a turbulent America at the time, but we didn’t anticipate the type of shenanigans that were happening at that time,” he told reporters. “We wait and hope for the best, and we have planned for the worst.”

Winfrey, the city clerk, said she once thought her personal police escort was “over the top.”

“But when they came to my house, they came to my house in 2020 and threatened my life because they thought I had something to do with Trump’s defeat, and then it became different for me,” she declared.

Asked at a news conference about the focus on voter fraud in Democratic cities like Detroit, Baxter said race was a factor.

“It’s because we’re a black city,” Baxter said. “I think when you look at some of the attacks that have been made on communities like Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta, those type of communities, that’s where black people live, that’s where black people are the administrators of the process , and this is why we are attacked so often.

Thanks to a measure passed in the 2022 midterms, local clerks in Michigan can choose to pre-process mail-in ballots before Election Day, which officials hope will lead to faster results and fewer conspiracy theories on election night.