Report finds problems with Michigan's post-election audits
LANSING – The Michigan Bureau of Elections should do more to ensure local election officials are trained in how to conduct post-election audits, Michigan Auditor General Doug Ringler said in a report released Friday.
And inadequate oversight and reporting of post-election audits resulted in the Bureau of Elections inaccurately reporting the scope and completion of those audits, the auditor found.
But the report also validated 99.9% of ballots tabulated by voting equipment and certified by county and state canvassers and confirmed in post-election audits. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said the report once again confirms that "Michigan’s 2020 election was secure and the outcome accurately reflects the will of the voters."
Shortfalls around training were the only "material condition" — the most serious type of finding — identified by the auditor, who is nonpartisan and works for the Michigan Legislature, in the highly anticipated 67-page report.
The audit found:
Of 83 county clerks completing post-election audits, 43, or 52%, had not viewed the related webinars or videos, though the bureau noted that does not necessarily mean they were not familiar with the required procedures.
Of those 43 clerks, eight, or 19%, were not fully certified at the time of the post-election audit.
Of 22 other county election officials who conducted post-election audits, 13, or 59%, had not viewed the webinars or videos.
Of 361 assigned post-election audits, 31 were not submitted by county clerks to the state's eLearningCenter, and 12 were never completed. Of the 330 reports that were submitted to the eLearning Center, 34 were submitted two to 47 days late.
The bureau did not ensure clerks hand counted ballots during the post-election audits, as required. For 40 of the 239 completed post-election audits, county clerks did not hand count the U.S. Senate race ballots, as required. And in 12 of those 40 audits, hand counting did not occur for any race.
"Inconsistent application of its prescribed procedures limits (the bureau's) ability to effectively conclude or perform any potential statewide analysis of the county clerks' hand count results," the report said.
"The bureau informed us it was not aware that some county clerks did not hand count the appropriate statewide race; however, this information was available to the (bureau) in the eLearningCenter."
The report said the bureau's reporting on the audits contained inaccurate information as a result of the lack of oversight.
"The bureau reported county clerks completed all 258 assigned post-election audits with a full hand count of paper ballots cast in the U.S. Senate race," the report said. However, that was not accurate in each instance.
In response the bureau said it generally agreed with the findings, but said the audit upheld the effectiveness of its post-election audit processes. It said that in some cases the state relied on verbal confirmation from county clerks that audits had been completed, but will not do so in the future.
The bureau also said that the number of post-election audits conducted after the 2020 election was unprecedented, and that is important context to consider when assessing its overall performance.
The auditor called on the bureau to establish a certification program for county clerks and other election officials who conduct post-election audits and to assign training to city and township clerks for known deficiencies.
In its response to the audit, the Bureau of Elections said it agrees with the findings and has already established a certification training class. But it said the auditor's inability to verify that training materials were viewed does not by itself show that those training materials were not viewed by the relevant officials.
"Post-election procedural audits have not changed significantly in recent years, and (the bureau) believes county clerks and other officials have had and continue to have a high level of competence and experience in conducting audits," the bureau said in a response included with the audit report.
Post-election audits upheld the results of the 2020 election, as did an investigation by a Senate committee led by a Michigan Republican senator. Despite those findings, former President Donald Trump and others have continued to make claims, without evidence, of widespread election fraud.
The report called for changes to state election law to improve and enhance the post-election audit process. The Bureau of Elections said it has been supportive of most of those proposed changes for many years.
“By confirming the effectiveness of the most comprehensive post-election audit in state history, the auditor general affirmed what has been demonstrated time and time again — Michigan’s 2020 election was secure and the outcome accurately reflects the will of the voters,” Benson said in a Friday news release.
“The auditors recognized the tremendous work the Michigan Bureau of Elections and local election officials did to carry out more than 250 successful post-election audits," and the performance of local clerks was "outstanding, especially when we take into consideration the national, coordinated and shameful effort to overturn the legitimate outcome of the election and undermine the clerks themselves,” Benson said.
The report also examined maintenance of the state’s qualified voter file — the database housing information on every registered voter in Michigan.
The auditor found that 99.1% of registered voters' information in the state's qualified voter file matched data in the state driver's license database; 99.99% of those who cast votes during the time period covered by the audit were within acceptable age parameters, and 99.99% of the votes cast were not identified as duplicate votes.
But the audit called on the bureau to improve its process for reconciling data between the qualified voter file and the driver's license file "to help decrease the risk of ineligible electors voting in Michigan or eligible electors not receiving the correct ballot for their jurisdiction."
Friday's audit follows a December 2019 auditor general's report that identified a similar need.
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Of 11.7 million votes cast in eight elections between May 2019 and November 2020, the auditor found 2,775 (0.02%) of those votes cast by voters who were dead as of Election Day. Nearly 99% of those votes were cast by voters who died within 40 days prior to the election, pointing to legal absentee voting by voters who subsequently died before Election Day.
The audit also identified voters who were inaccurately identified as deceased, because of common surnames or other matching errors.
The auditor pointed to questions the state should consider, including how deaths are reported to the Bureau of Elections and whether a legally cast vote should count if the voter then dies prior to Election Day.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer vetoed a bill supported by Democratic and Republican lawmakers that would have shifted responsibility for clearing dead voters from the qualified voter file from city and township clerks to county clerks. County clerks already have the information on those who have died and currently send this information to local jurisdictions.
Some clerks welcomed the change proposed in the bill Whitmer rejected.
Ahead of the release of the latest report, election officials expressed concerns that it would open the door to new opportunities for misinformation about the 2020 presidential election to spread.
The auditor found that the Bureau of Elections was effective in limiting access to the Qualified Voter File to those officials who required access, and providing those officials with proper training. The audit called for improved security configurations to prevent unauthorized access, but did not find that such unauthorized access had occurred.
The bureau said it agrees with that finding and already has implemented the improved security configurations the auditor recommended.
An audit of the audits
One of the stated objectives of the audit was to assess "the sufficiency of selected (Bureau of Elections) post-election review procedures to help ensure the integrity of elections."
Following the 2020 presidential election, election officials across the state participated in a hand count of more than 18,000 randomly selected ballots from more than 1,300 localities.
The review — called a risk-limiting audit — affirmed the accuracy of the November presidential election results. The ballots collected fell just 78 ballots short of the number needed for a complete sample, so officials have called it an auditing exercise.
The Bureau of Elections also conducted audits of counting boards that processed and counted absentee ballots. And county clerks across the state collectively carried out more than 200 procedural audits — hand counts of the ballots that confirmed that voting machines tabulated the results correctly.
Attorney General Dana Nessel determined in an opinion issued last August that the auditor general lacks the authority to audit county clerks or local governments as part of the Bureau of Elections audit. She said that the auditor general’s staff could review — but not physically handle — election records in the presence of local election officials or Bureau of Elections staff.
Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum said she and Delhi Township Clerk Evan Hope retrieved ballots from the November 2020 election and hand counted them late last year in front of staff from the auditor's office as part of the review.
Byrum said that the auditor's staff made hash marks on their notes to tally the results. "That’s not how you count votes," she said.
"Their numbers didn’t match and they said, 'Eh, close enough.' And I remember saying, 'No, no that is not close enough. We have certified results. We will recount because it is not close enough.'"
So they hand counted the ballots again and the second time, the auditors' tallies matched the hand count and the certified results, Byrum said.
"The results never changed, and that's what is so frustrating because I do not believe any amount of audits is going to change people's perception," she said. And she voiced concerns that the audit's report will lead some voters to further doubt the results.
"I mean the truth is with how politicized this election has become ... even the smallest recommendation from an audit like this will further erode the public trust in our democratic system at a time when we can ill afford it," she said.
A spokesperson previously denied that the Auditor General’s Office was seeking to conduct another audit of the 2020 election. "To clarify, this is not an audit or recount of the 2020 election results," state relations officer Kelly Miller wrote in an email last July.
As lawmakers push for changes to Michigan's election laws, Benson has proposed requiring a statewide election audit before the Board of State Canvassers meets to certify the election results.
Michigan judges have argued that a post-election audit cannot occur before election results are certified while GOP-nominated Michigan Supreme Court Justice David Viviano has asserted that it remains an open constitutional question whether an audit can occur prior to certification.
Clara Hendrickson fact-checks Michigan issues and politics as a corps member with Report for America, an initiative of The GroundTruth Project. Make a tax-deductible contribution to support her work at bit.ly/freepRFA. Contact her at chendrickson@freepress.com or 313-296-5743. Follow her on Twitter @clarajanehen.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Report: Michigan clerks need better post-election audit training
