Was there a signal connected to a foreign Wi-Fi device in a vote tabulator in Michigan on Election Day, Nov. 3, 2026? No, that's not true: Patrick Colbeck, with the Election Crime Bureau, backed by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, declined to provide evidence supporting his claim in an interview with Lead Stories. Michigan Department of State Chief Communications Officer Angela Benander called the claim "complete nonsense" and said the agency had not received any inquiries about it.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) by Patrick Colbeck (@pjcolbeck) on X on Nov. 4, 2026. It read:
ALERT: An alert poll worker in Michigan has detected a Wi-Fi signal prior to closure of the polls that appears to be connected to a foreign Wi-Fi device inside a tabulator.
Only way to know for sure is to conduct a Physical Configuration Audit and a review of event logs for all tabulators in use to support our elections.
NOTE: There are no EAC certified tabulator configurations in use in Michigan which include internal modems (i.e. hidden within chassis and typically installed on motherboard).
Why is this concerning?
Remote access to tabulators opens the door to following election fraud mechanisms as a minimum:
1) Advanced intel on election results prior to closure of polls enabling fraudsters to "order" ballots to fill in vote deficits against projections
2) Direct manipulation of vote tallies
3) Direct manipulation of ballot imagesPlus, it violates the chain of custody for election results.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @pjcolbeck on X.)
The same claim also appeared in another post (archived here) by Colbeck on Facebook on Nov. 4, 2026.
Election Crime Bureau
The Election Crime Bureau (ECB) is led and funded by Lindell. Colbeck is chief operating officer at Lindell Management and writes articles that appear on the ECB website.
In September 2024, ECB emailed election officials nationwide seeking personal information and details about their offices' cybersecurity protections, ABC News reported (archived here). The Center for Internet Security, a nonprofit that works to safeguard public and private organizations against cyber threats, warned that the emails by ECB could be misleading and pose security risks, and notified the FBI. Colbeck defended the survey, saying it was intended to inform officials about the organization's operations.
ECB interview
Colbeck: I'm not going to tell you any of the folks that I have been talking with on this. Suffice to say, it's been given to government officials, and they will be investigating. And you know, it's always interesting. I always get these questions from certain media outlets that are always interested in the network of people we're connecting with. I'm not really interested in that. The bottom line is, we've got evidence that there are hidden Wi-Fi connections active during early voting, and we're not saying that any malfeasance occurred as a result of this...
Lead Stories: Have you been in touch with the Michigan Secretary of State's Office?
Colbeck: I'm not talking about anybody who I've connected with yet...
Lead Stories: Are these government investigators?
Colbeck: The people that we're talking to are government officials, and I'd rather have them choose when they want to divulge the information, when they don't.
Lead Stories contacted the Michigan Department of State about the claim because Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is Michigan's chief election administrator. Angela Benander, the agency's chief communications officer, responded to questions about the claim in a Nov. 4, 2026, email to Lead Stories. She wrote:
It's complete nonsense.
Asked in a follow-up email whether anyone had reported such an incident to the Michigan Department of State, she replied, "No."
Lead Stories also contacted the FBI and the Election Crimes Branch of the U.S. Department of Justice about the claim and whether either agency was investigating it, but did not receive an immediate response.
Up to this point, there is no evidence supporting any of Colbeck's accusations or that an investigation is underway.
News searches
Lead Stories searched Google News (archived here) and Yahoo News (archived here) and found no matching reports about the claim from established news outlets using the search terms: "Wi-Fi," "tabulator," "Michigan," and "foreign."
