Dennis Dahmer was 12 years old in January 1966 when Klansmen stormed his family home and set it on fire, murdering his father, Vernon. He still remembers the shootout; he remembers watching his father die from smoke inhalation. The trauma lingers to this day, 60 years later. 

Vernon Dahmer had been a fixture in the African American community near Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He ran a successful local grocery, and, after the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, obtained the right to register voters and collect poll taxes, which were still in effect, at his store. Members of the local White Citizens’ Council started to appear at the family farm, warning his father to stop, Dahmer told TPM, but that didn’t deter him. He recorded a radio announcement in January 1966 offering to cover the cost of poll taxes for African Americans who couldn’t afford to pay. The KKK attacked the next day.

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Last month, the DOJ left officials across the state of Michigan in a state of bewilderment. 

Civil Division chief Harmeet Dhillon demanded the clerk of Wayne County, where Detroit is located, provide records from the 2024 election, saying the DOJ intended to investigate supposed fraud from that election in the state. 

The reason for the letter didn’t surprise local and state officials. This is Trump II, after all: the FBI has executed search warrants at the Fulton County, Georgia elections hub and has obtained the results of a crackpot Arizona audit into the 2020 election results in Maricopa County. Other FBI agents are reportedly investigating the 2020 election in Wisconsin. 

But what left Michigan officials surprised and bemused was that Dhillon had made a very basic mistake: she sent the letter to the wrong office. In Michigan, cities and townships run elections, not county clerks. 

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