One week out from the general election gives us a little perspective on results which turned out to be much different than reported on election night.
Unofficial results posted late Tuesday, early Wednesday indicated that six of the seven county commissioner seats were won by Democrats. Results were also posted for the Glen Lake Board of Education as well as Leland and Centerville townships.
However, the results were incomplete to the tune of more than 3,100 ballots, changing some of the county board race results. Preliminary results showed that Democrats Scott Perry, Lois Bahle and Kama Ross were victorious over their Republican opponents. Instead Republicans Mark Walter, Will Bunek and Alan Campbell appear to have prevailed.
Leland Township trustee race appeared to have been won by Democrat Kathy Dawkins and Republican Steve Scales. The actual winner appears to have been township trustee Mariann Kirch and new member Scales.
In Centerville Township Paul Winston and Rolf von Waltershausen appeared to be the top vote-getters for the township trustee seats in the first vote tally. Instead, the winners appear to have been Republicans Jolyn Arens and Kerry O’Non.
Tuesday, county Clerk Michelle Crocker explained to commissioners that the discrepancies in Leelanau County’s unofficial election results were not caused by a computer error. Between Election Day and Nov. 8, the unofficial results were updated to include over 3,100 ballots that were not counted, changing the results of several races.
Instead of including 3,156 early in-person voting ballots, the clerk’s office inadvertently reported just under 1,600 sample ballots from an Oct. 17 elections accuracy in their Statement of Votes Cast, Crocker said.
The sample ballots have been replaced with actual votes on the unofficial election results webpage as of Friday. Crocker said they expected the early in-person votes to override the results from the election accuracy test. Upon contacting the vendor, election administrators learned they should have completely purged the data instead.
Since Leelanau County officials didn’t use the devices as instructed, the changes to the unofficial results can’t be chalked up to unreliable computers.
But if the problem was caused through human error, it was also old fashioned non-computerized processes that resolved it. The board of canvassers compare the paper receipts from the tabulators with the Statement of Votes Cast. It’s a mundane task, but a necessary one, since the board of canvassers were the ones who found the error last week.
Crocker expects the final Nov. 5 election results to be certified today or Friday. According to michiganvoting. org, the canvas must be completed and the results must be certified by Nov. 19.
While the final results will likely disappoint some candidates who seemed to be winning their elections a week ago, all of us will be somewhat relieved to get an official word on the election results soon.
Calhoun, Kalamazoo, and Kent counties also changed their unofficial results due to different issues. According to MLive, Kent and Kalamazoo counties had miscounted votes due to human errors, while Calhoun County had a software error. Allegan County had an unrelated error that could affect the Michigan State University Board of Trustees race. These stories are still developing.
