|
95 Detroit poll books missing for several days
Detroit elections officials waited several days to deliver nearly 100 poll books to Wayne County officials charged with certifying the presidential election, newly released documents show.County clerk officials on Thursday released a memo to State Elections Director Chris Thomas that said 95 poll books from the 662 precincts weren’t available at the start of the canvass, which began the day after the Nov. 8 election. Five of those poll books, which contain the names of voters and ensure the integrity of elections, were never delivered to county canvassers and presumably remain missing. Canvassers compare poll books with printouts from voting machines to ensure the number of people who signed in to vote match the number of ballots cast. The revelation comes atop other irregularities that have prompted a state audit. Among other issues, The Detroit News reported this week that voting machines registered more votes than they should have in one-third of all city precincts. “I’m not happy with how Detroit handled this election at all,” said Krista Hartounian, chairwoman of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, which certified the election. “We had been seeing improvement, but this one was different. This one was off.” Hartounian said Detroit officials were still delivering poll books to canvassers on the Friday and Saturday after the Tuesday election. By law, the canvassers have 14 days to certify general elections. “The canvass was extremely pressed for time,” Hartounian said. “There was so much pressure. It was so tight, and Detroit was still delivering information until the very end.” The memo from county elections official Jennifer Redmond to the state also shows poll books in 101 Detroit precincts were not delivered in sealed envelopes, as the law requires. Separate county documents obtained by The News show that poll books in 17 precincts were missing seal numbers from ballot boxes, as is required by state law. Detroit Clerk Janice Winfrey and city elections director Daniel Baxter did not return several messages seeking comment. Last week, Baxter placed much of the blame on what he called outdated, decade-old voting machines, saying 87 broke on Election Day. The city had a two-page ballot, and frequent jams led to inaccurate counts when workers failed to reset counters, he said. A Detroit News analysis of statewide recount tallies, however, found other counties that used the same optical scanner performed just fine. In fact, the counties that used the machine, the Election Systems & Software M100, had fewer unrecountable precincts than those who used two other voting machines in Michigan. The M100s, which are used in 55 percent of Michigan’s precincts, have a spotty reputation. In 2008, then-Oakland County Clerk Ruth Johnson, who is now secretary of state, urged federal officials to investigate after the optical scanners improperly counted 8 percent of ballots during testing. Gisgie Gendreau, a spokeswoman for Johnson’s office, said in an email the secretary of state is confident in the accuracy of the M100 voting machines used in Detroit and other parts of the state “assuming they are properly coded for the particular election.” There were fewer than 30 machines that required Election Day maintenance, she said. The department pays for half of the maintenance costs in Detroit and other jurisdictions with electronic poll books. State Rep. Fred Durhal III, D-Detroit, said the state “has a responsibility to take a closer look” at Detroit. “If you have faulty equipment, it can definitely cause an issue in Detroit, because you’re counting more votes than any other city,” said Durhal, who pushed for more funding for new voting machines. “I don’t think fraud is involved, I want to make that clear, but I think we’ve got to get to the bottom of what happened.” It’s unclear how many extra votes were counted in Detroit. That’s because tallies were off by five or more votes in 52 Detroit precincts, but county officials will not release the exact number of discrepancies in each precinct. The News has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the information. Posted by: Pappy 2016-12-18 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=476038 |