Michigan Vote Recount: Half of Detroit Ballots May Not Qualify

DETROIT, MI — About half of the ballots in heavily Democratic Detroit, which overwhelmingly supported former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by a two-to-one margin in the Nov. 8 presidential election, could be tossed out of the ongoing recount because the number of voters and the actual ballots cast don’t match. Problems were reported in 392 of the city’s 662 precincts.

The problem isn’t unique to Detroit, and it casts a shadow over the accuracy of the election, according to the state coordinator of the massive recount of Michigan’s 4.8 million presidential ballots. In all, 610 precincts in Wayne County, including those from the 392 problem precincts in Detroit, may not be counted. A final decision on that is pending.

Green Party candidate Jill Stein asked for a vote recount in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania after a prominent group of election attorneys and computer scientists, including University of Michigan computer science professor J. Alex Halderman, claimed to have uncovered “persuasive evidence” that the election results in the three battleground states could have been hacked. President-elect Donald Trump won all three states by slim margins. In Michigan, the difference between Trump and Clinton was only 10,704 votes.

Daniel Baxter, the elections director for the city of Detroit, told The Detroit News the problem seems to stem from worn-out voting machines. Eighty-seven optical scanners broke on Election Day when voters tried to feed their ballots into them.

“It’s not good,” he said.

“We’re seeing this issue in several instances of precincts being deemed not-recountable because the numbers don’t match,” Keenan Pontoni, the Recount Michigan coordinator, told the Detroit Free Press. “We think that any instance where ballots are not being counted compromises the process.”

Under Michigan law, if discrepancy exists between the poll book and ballot box numbers, the ballots won’t be recounted unless there’s a valid explanation. If none exists, the original Election Night tally stands.

“Michigan law is stupid on this point,” Mark Grebner, a political consultant who has studied Michigan elections for decades, told the Free Press. “It makes no sense, and it should be fixed. Other states don’t do this.”

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• Jill Stein Won't Appeal After Judge Rejects Hand-Count of Wisconsin Votes
• Jill Stein Officially Asks for Michigan Presidential Vote Recount
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The Wayne County recount starts Tuesday morning. Baxter said he doesn’t think all 392 of the Detroit precincts with mismatched numbers will be disqualified. Most will match when sealed ballot boxes are reopened, he predicted.

“It’s a challenge, but we’re confident the ballots will match,” Baxter told The Detroit News. “I don’t think it’s going to be 100 percent, but it never is with a recount.”

Wayne County certified its election results, even though canvassers weren’t given an explanation for the mismatched numbers.

Problems were also reported in Flint, another Democratic stronghold. Of 222 precincts in Genesee County, poll books and ballots didn’t match in 13 of 222 precincts, about half of of them in Flint. Those results were also certified.

“The trouble is there’s too much leniency with the board of canvassers,” John Gleason, Genesee County’s clerk, told The Detroit News. “They’re not as stringent as need to be because they think it won’t affect the outcome of the election.”

If large numbers of Detroit precincts are disqualified, it will be “almost impossible” for Clinton to make up the 10,000-plus-vote difference, Ernest Johnson, a Democratic political activist who worked for the Clinton campaign on get-out-the-vote efforts, told The Detroit News.

“It’s a real long-shot now because, if I were looking for 10,000 votes, the first place I’d look is Wayne County,” Johnson said. “That’s a huge problem. ... But if anything good comes of this it brings up this problem (with voting machines) that needs to be corrected.”

Photo via NicoleKlauss Flickr Commons