Former Flint Township clerk’s illness delays sentencing in ballot tampering case

Kathy Funk and her attorney Philip H. Beauvais III stand in court, Genesee Circuit Court, Flint, Michigan, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2023.

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(This story has been updated with additional information.)

GENESEEE COUNTY, MI -- Sentencing of the county’s former elections supervisor has been delayed after she reported being too sick to appear in Genesee Circuit Court on Monday, March 20.

Judge Mark Latchana rescheduled the sentencing of Kathy Funk for April 24 after her attorney said she could not appear on criminal charges tied to her alleged tampering with a ballot canister while serving as Flint Township clerk in 2020.

Funk left her position in Flint Township to become the county’s elections supervisor in November 2021 but was terminated from that position in December. She was charged a year ago with ballot tampering and misconduct in office in connection to her work in Flint Township.

In January, minutes before a Circuit Court jury was scheduled to be selected to hear her case, Funk agreed to a plea deal with prosecutors, in which the ballot tampering charge would be dismissed and she would receive no jail or prison time on the misconduct charge, which she pleaded no contest to.

Funk was not required to testify about the incident that led to the charges against her, but her attorney stipulated to the underlying facts of the case -- that while she was working as the Flint Township clerk following the August 2020 primary election, Funk broke the seal on an election ballot canister so that the votes inside would not be counted.

Funk was not only responsible for overseeing that primary election, she was a candidate for township clerk and won her race by just 79 votes against challenger Manya Triplett, who was later appointed to replace Funk in the position.

The charges against her were brought by prosecutors from the Michigan Attorney General’s Office following a Michigan State Police investigation into suspicious activities in the days following the Aug. 4, 2020, election in Flint Township.

MSP said in that report that Funk filed a breaking and entering complaint on Aug. 11, 2020, telling a trooper that she believed that the township hall on Dye Road had been broken into sometime during the previous weekend and that a storage room next to her office was in disarray with a shelf knocked down, several items moved, and a seal broken on a ballot canister in the room.

Because the seal on the canister was broken, votes inside could not be recounted, officials have said.

During her rescheduled sentencing, Funk may hear from more than the judge before she’s sentenced on the misconduct charge.

Richard Cunningham, an assistant attorney general, told the Latchana on Monday that township Supervisor Karyn Miller has asked to testify at the sentencing about the fallout from the Funk case on the township.

Miller has told MLive-The Flint Journal previously that before Funk’s arrest, she confronted the former clerk about allegations that absentee ballots had been moved around inside the township hall and about reports that Funk and her husband were inside the hall after business hours.

Miller has also said she was also concerned that a window to the clerk’s office was covered “so no one could see in.”

Read more at The Flint Journal:

Former Flint Township clerk takes plea deal, gets no jail time in ballot tampering case

Genesee County elections supervisor facing ballot tampering, misconduct charges

Here’s the schedule for Genesee County’s 2023 household hazardous waste recycle days

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