Wayne County Board of Canvassers member William Hartmann, who made national news last November as he and the other Republican member of the board initially refused to vote to certify the result of the 2020 election in Michigan’s most populous county before caving and trying to rescind the vote, has died of COVID-19 at the age of 63, the Detroit Free Press reports.

It is not known if Hartmann was vaccinated, but he probably wasn’t given “his Facebook page includes posts and memes downplaying the severity of the coronavirus, comparing vaccine passports to Nazi Germany” per the Free Press. Back on November 19th 2020, National Zero reported that Hartmann and Republican colleague Monica Palmer had initially voted to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of primarily-minority voters in Detroit by not certifying the vote from the city, while both had voted to accept the results from primarily-white suburbs of Wayne County, where error rates were reportedly higher than Detroit.

At the end of the board meeting, after public comments made it clear the denial of certification would be viewed as a partisan, racist act, the pair voted with the two Democrats on the board to certify the elections. By the next day, however, both Republicans flip-flopped again, signing affidavits that they wished to rescind their votes, a moot point given that the certified votes had been sent to the state board of canvassers. The two Republicans have said they wanted to rescind their votes to certify because they were promised that the Michigan Secretary of State promised to audit the vote tallies. Later, Jocelyn Benson said she did not view the agreement among the board members as binding to the state office, a statement Palmer claimed violated the agreement.