Hundreds Of Detroit Precincts Were Ineligible For Recount, Almost Two-Thirds Of Those Had Too Many Votes
Optical scanner voting machines used by Detroiters in November’s presidential election tabulated more ballots than the number of voters that had been tallied by poll workers, detailed reports from the office of Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett reportedly showed. In 248 of Detroit’s 662 precincts, there were more votes recorded than there were voters recorded, the Detroit News indicated. The voting irregularities that were discovered in Detroit led Michigan Secretary of State’s Elections Director Chris Thomas to voice that there was a need for an audit, the Detroit News reported.
The statewide presidential recount was stopped following a decision by the Michigan Supreme Court. Detroit precincts were among those that simply could not qualify for the recount due to irregularities. The Detroit News said that Clinton “overwhelmingly prevailed in Detroit and Wayne County,” though Trump won the state by 10,704 votes. Some Republican state senators called for an investigation of Wayne County precincts.
State records indicate that one-tenth of the precincts in Michigan that had begun the recount efforts ended up ineligible for the recount, and the Detroit News reported that the problems were the worst in Detroit. Nearly 60 percent of Detroit precincts could not be counted and two-thirds of those that could not be counted in Detroit were ineligible, because they seemed to have more votes than they had voters.
As of Saturday, a press release has not been issued on the Wayne County website about the election irregularities. The Detroit News, one of the most highly respected newspapers in Michigan, states that it requested the report from the county after reporting that more than half of Detroit would be ineligible for the recount that began in Michigan.
The Detroit News stated that the report they requested “shows a systematic tendency toward counting more votes than the previous Wayne County report, which didn’t specify if precincts had over-counted or under-counted ballots.”
Secretary of State spokesman Fred Woodhams said that state officials were told by city officials that ballots were never taken out of the locked bin below the tabulators.
“That’s what we’ve been told, and we’ll be wanting to verify it,” Woodhams said. “At any rate, this should not have happened.”
The Detroit News reported that when it broke the news, “Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey and Elections Director Daniel Baxter did not return multiple messages.” The Detroit News further reported, “It’s unclear how many votes were added in Detroit. That’s because county officials have not tabulated how much the ballots were off in precincts with discrepancies of at least five votes.” In all, 52 of the 248 precincts that had too many votes and no explanation were in the category of “five or more over.”
On the other end of the spectrum, Detroit Precinct 152 contained only 50 of the 306 ballots listed in the poll book, according to Detroit Free Press. Of the 144 precincts that had too few votes and no explanation, eight of those precincts were in the category of “five or more under.”
“State officials are planning to examine about 20 Detroit precincts where ballot boxes opened during the recount had fewer ballots than poll workers had recorded on Election Day,” the Detroit News reported.
ABC News reported that after roughly two million of Michigan’s 4.8 million ballots were recounted, Clinton gained 833 votes and Trump gained 731 votes. ABC News reported that the attorney who represented Stein in her recount effort blames machines that should have been replaced years ago in Detroit for the ballot inconsistencies. Before the recount was stopped by the Michigan Supreme Court, roughly one-third of Wayne County’s ballots, which included Detroit’s ballots, were recounted by hand.
[Featured Image by Rachel Woolf/Getty Images]
