Audit Of 20 Detroit Area Polling Places On The Horizon
The audit will look at precincts where the number of ballots in recount containers didn’t match number of voters.
The recount may be over, but the Michigan Secretary of State isn’t done with the ballots yet. They are in the process of planning an audit of about 20 Detroit area polling places.
During the short-lived recount, the Michigan Bureau of Elections discovered a number of places where the number of ballots in the recount containers didn’t match the reported number of voters.
Now, about 20 polling places in the Detroit area will be audited.
Fred Woodhams is with the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office. He said the Detroit elections staff said it was simple human error – but they plan to verify that.
“We want to give people reassurance about what happened and we will look into the matter thoroughly and if there’s more action that needs to be taken we will do that,” he said.
Woodhams said even if ballots didn’t go into the right box for the recount, the votes were counted on Election Day.
“Voters should know when they mark their ballot and they feed it into the tabulator, it is being counted,” he said. “So the fact that the ballots were not properly transferred into a field container doesn’t affect the fact that their ballot was counted.”
