Gateway Pundit investigation into the Michigan 2020 election overlooks the possibility of delivering ballots by hand

Written by Sophie Lawton

Published

Gateway Pundit contributor Patty McMurray appeared on War Room today to promote the right-wing website's efforts to expose voter fraud in Detroit, Michigan, during the 2020 election. McMurray told host Steve Bannon that volunteers have been looking at absentee ballots in an attempt to prove Biden was given what she called in a post on the site “an inexplicable victory in the must-win state of Michigan.” 

One of McMurray's examples of possible fraud shared on War Room was that “36% of the ballots we've gone through so far have been dated by the voter and received by the city clerk on the same day” yet “Sen. Gary Peters was making a lot of noise at that time because he was furious that the Detroit post office was so slow.” Bannon called this a “physical impossibility” and both agreed that this means at least 36% of the votes reviewed “are noncertifiable.”

In 2020, Detroit opened 30 absentee ballot drop box sites and allowed voters to vote in-person absentee at 23 satellite voter locations. Voters in Michigan are also allowed to drop off absentee ballots directly to the city clerk's office or even directly insert their ballot into a tabulator on Election Day. The reality is voters could fill out a ballot and hand it to the city clerk within the same hour, never mind the same day. 

McMurray's claims and the Gateway Pundit's efforts to uncover fraud in the 2020 election are just another example of right-wing figures scrambling for reasons to suppress voters.

From the February 27, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room

STEVE BANNON (HOST): Patty, any other things that you — that the audience should have top of mind that you found, ma'am?

PATTY MCMURRAY (GATEWAY PUNDIT): Yeah. I also wanted to point out that we have, of the ballots that we've gone through so far, we've gone through 84,000 of them, 36% of those ballot envelopes that we've gone through have been dated by the voter and received by the city clerk on the same day.

I want to remind everybody that these ballots were being mailed out during COVID, and Sen. Gary Peters was making a lot of noise at that time because he was furious that the Detroit post office was so slow and was concerned about — 

BANNON: So, that's a physical impossibility. 

MCMURRAY: Absolutely.

BANNON: So what you're saying is 36% of the ones you found already are — can't be certified or noncertifiable, correct?

MCMURRAY: Well, it's an interesting, probably completely non-possible fact that we've discovered. It looks like just a ridiculous statistic — 36% during COVID is ridiculous.

BANNON: There's so much more that's going to come out — we'll get to all that later. I got Garland Favorito who's gonna join us here in a moment. Do you believe you have the same level of evidence, let's call it, that Kash Patel, the ballots, the tapes, everything that Georgia had to raise, do you believe you were able to get it through these FOIA requests? That you have the equivalent of what Georgia's got and now the federal government that they're fighting in court, that the traitors and crooks down in Georgia and Fulton County are fighting in court to get back, ma'am?

MCMURRAY: Yes, we do. We have almost a million documents. We have hard copies that are in storage, and we also have digital files that our volunteers are working with and that we're working with currently. But, yes, we do have what Georgia has.