Wayne County certifies vote with no chaos
Canvassers meeting lacks drama of 2020 election
Amid calls to certify the election that at times echoed loudly in the room where the Wayne County Board of Canvassers met Tuesday, the elections panel in Michigan’s largest county unanimously signed off on the results of the recent midterm election.
The board’s meeting — held on the final day under Michigan law for counties to certify election results — followed a smooth canvassing process throughout Michigan that saw every canvassing board across the state’s 83 counties complete its work on time, according to the Secretary of State’s Office.
Two years ago, this typically routine postelection review and the ministerial body that carries it out ended up in the national spotlight when the two Republican members serving on the Wayne County canvassing board at the time initially refused to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election before ultimately reversing course.
Bipartisan canvassing boards — made up of two Democrats and two Republicans nominated by local political party organizations — spend the two weeks after an election reviewing poll books and vote totals, correcting any mathematical errors identified and then signing off on the results. The job of certifying statewide election results falls to the Board of State Canvassers responsible for straightforward addition: adding up the vote totals certified by the counties.
Ahead of the Wayne County canvassing meeting, messages circulated on social media calling for people to show up and demand the board not certify the election results. Some did, in public comment.
But outside, before the meeting began, dozens demonstrated to urge the certification of the results, gathering on the sidewalk and chanting, “count every vote.”
Branden Snyder, executive director of Detroit Action, a nonprofit focused on advocating for Detroiters of color throughout the metro region, held a megaphone and addressed a crowd urging the board to certify.
He chided those who “want to use dog whistle politics to tear us apart that want to continue to do things to harm our communities and make it seem like Black and brown folks are illegitimate or unscrupulous and that ain’t right.”
“We’re not here to disrupt, we’re not here to cause any havoc. We come here to shine a little light on the process and make sure we count every vote, is that right?” he said.
The canvassing board’s meeting saw a few hiccups such as interruptions from those tuning into the meeting over Zoom and an emphatic call from one Republican member for answers regarding an error in some Detroit precincts.
GOP canvasser Katherine Riley blasted state election officials, calling the issue that occurred in Michigan’s largest city widespread. In a statement issued on Election
Day, the city’s elections department said that the electronic poll book in some precincts indicated that a ballot they were about to issue a voter had a number that was already issued as an absentee ballot. The department called the issue a “harmless data error” that was resolved by creating a mechanism to differentiate the two numbers.
Riley said that workers in Detroit had to scramble to address the problem, with some using paper poll books and others developing their own solutions so those impacted could vote.
“This unnecessary and irresponsible error created much chaos for us on the canvass as well,” Riley said. She said she was met with “obfuscation” when she spoke with the state Bureau of Elections about what happened in Detroit. “This is unacceptable. These are the questions that must be answered. What went wrong and why,” she said before joining the other board members in voting to certify the results.
During a public comment period that followed the vote, some celebrated the board’s certification of the midterm results while others — including former GOP state senator and election conspiracist Patrick Colbeck — leveled allegations of misconduct and called for a socalled forensic audit.
Hundreds of audits, court rulings and postelection reviews undercut allegations of widespread fraud and misconduct and upheld the results of the 2020 election in Michigan. Trish Oliver, who addressed the canvassers over Zoom, called Detroit the epicenter of voter fraud in 2020 and said nothing had changed in the last two years.
Wayne County was not the only area that saw pushback against certifying the results. Ottawa County Clerk Justin Roebuck said the canvassing board unanimously certified the election results and resisted public pressure from commenters calling on the board not to do so.
Roebuck wrote in an email that “our Board of Canvassers is very solid in terms of their understanding of the statute and of their ministerial role and responsibility within the process – they take it seriously, and I’m thankful for them!”
Certification of midterm follows dramatic 2020 canvass in Wayne County
In 2020, former President Donald Trump refused to accept his loss in Michigan, a lawsuit attempted to delay the certification in Wayne County and the chair of the Michigan GOP at the time celebrated the GOP members of the Wayne County canvassing board at the time for initially refusing to certify the election results.
But this year, all but one Trump-endorsed candidate seeking statewide office — Republican secretary of state candidate Kristina Karamo — have publicly conceded their losses to the Democratic incumbents Michigan voters reelected by large margins in the Nov. 8 election.
The recent midterm has also not seen a similar frenzy of litigation seeking to overturn the election. While some who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election have called for investigations, unlike in 2020, their calls have so far gone unmet by state lawmakers.
Following the 2020 election, local Republican parties nominated those to fill open GOP slots on canvassing boards who have embraced falsehoods and misinformation about fraud in the 2020 election. Their appointment raised the prospect that the boards could become a partisan bottleneck in the effort to certify the results of future elections.
In Wayne County, the GOP members who served on the canvassing board in 2020 were both replaced ahead of this year’s midterm: one whose term expired and another who died last year.
Republican canvasser Robert Boyd, one of the new members of the board, told the Free Press last year that he wouldn’t have certified the results of the 2020 presidential election and, at the time, gave no assurance that he would certify the results of future contests.
But Boyd and Riley, the other GOP canvasser, both joined the two Democrats on the board to certify the results of the primary election held in August and then the results of the November midterm.
During the August meeting to certify primary election results, Riley called her experience canvassing Detroit’s election results in the primary “a great experience” and said that she was generally “very impressed with how smoothly it went.”
Two years ago, the GOP chair of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers at the time suggested certifying the results everywhere but Detroit which initially recorded a significant number of unexplained imbalances between the number of ballots cast and the number of ballots recorded in the poll book. A post-election audit identified explanations for most of the mismatches.
An out-of-balance precinct — which election officials say typically reflects clerical errors — may have more voters’ names listed in the poll book recorded as having voted than ballots or more ballots than names. In this year’s midterm, Detroit balanced or identified explanations for any imbalances in 92% of its Election Day precincts and 100% of its absentee voting precincts, Wayne County elections director Gregory Mahar said during the canvassing meeting Tuesday.
The Board of State Canvassers is scheduled to meet Nov. 28 to certify the results of the recent midterm across Michigan.