Who’s responsible for errors?
Last week, Baxter told The News 87 optical scanners broke on Election Day. He said many jammed when voters tried repeatedly to stuff single ballots into scanners, which can result in erroneous vote counts if poll workers don’t adjust counters.
Former Detroit mayoral candidate Tom Barrow, who has challenged the city’s elections process for years, said blaming workers is a cop-out. According to city protocol, all precincts are supposed to be balanced when the ballot boxes are sealed at the end of the night, he said.
“The city is responsible. Janice Winfrey is responsible,” Barrow said. “This didn’t happen because of crazy, dyslexic senior citizens who are working as poll workers, like they want to portray this. That’s people who are trying to deny responsibility.”
He has asserted on social media that Winfrey cost Clinton the election in Michigan.
Others said there could be benign explanations.
Detroit’s ballot was two pages because it included dozens of candidates for the local Board of Education. The number of pages can cause machines to jam and lead them to count too many ballots, said Genesee County Clerk John Gleason.
“Usually, if there’s a problem, it tends to be more voters than votes,” he said. “But when we’re off, we should be very, very close, like one ballot.”
Genesee County, which like Wayne County is heavily Democratic, couldn’t recount 14 of the 142 precincts it had started before the court scuttled the process. Gleason took office in 2013 and said he had to “ride herd” over city clerks to ensure they reconciled precincts.
“Nothing is perfect. You have paper. You have humidity. You have people hanging onto ballots,” Gleason said.
“So there’s reasons, but there should be no excuses.”
