Uncounted primary ballots found in back room of Ecorse clerk's office after election
Before the members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers unanimously certified the results of the recent August primary late Tuesday, a debate over whether to tabulate a batch of uncounted ballots from Ecorse injected some last-minute drama.
Jennifer Redmond, Wayne County's deputy director of elections, told the canvassers that the three dozen ballots from the small Downriver city surfaced after it was discovered that the number of absentee ballots recorded as cast in the poll books didn't match the number of ballots counted on election night.
Nicole Merchant, Ecorse's interim city clerk, told the canvassers that the ballots were in a supply bag that had been sitting in a locked back room in the clerk's office since election night.
"Somehow they got misplaced," she said. She said that election workers' routine in the clerk's office was disrupted due to an out-of-service elevator that forced them to place ballots in a different place in the building.
"They're used to them being in a certain spot, and they've been doing this for years and this has never happened," she said. Merchant said that she was appointed interim clerk in June to fill a vacancy left in the office. The August primary election was the first she ever administered.
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Tracy Wimmer, a spokesperson for the Secretary of State's Office, said that specific numbers on how many untabulated ballots are counted during county canvasses across the state aren't available. But she wrote in an email that "it is not uncommon for county canvasses to identify and tabulate untabulated ballots and this is one of the reasons we have a canvass."
Richard Preuss, the chair and one of the two Democrats on the canvassing board, solicited recommendations to "make sure this never happens again." In the meantime, the board faced "a tough decision," he said.
Staff from the Wayne County Clerk's Office advised the canvassers to tabulate the 36 outstanding ballots. Merchant said that the ballots were stamped with the date and time they were received, which was before the 8 p.m. Election Day deadline.
She told canvassers that as far as she knew, the ballots were not handled by anyone other than someone in charge of administering elections in Ecorse.
During a lengthy discussion, Democratic canvasser James Britton made a passionate plea to count the unopened ballots.
"If our job is to correct the errors that are inherent in the system because human beings are prone to error, then our job in my opinion is to count the votes that the people who took the time to request an (absentee ballot), take it to their clerk's office, submit it to the clerk with the understanding that their vote would count," he said.
"And for us to sit here at this moment and disenfranchise those voters is not what we are tasked to do."
Republican canvasser Katherine Riley joined Britton and Preuss in voting in favor of tabulating the ballots. Republican canvasser Robert Boyd abstained.
During a long recess, canvassers and the county clerk's staff carried out the count, exactly two weeks from the day of the election when they should have been tabulated.
The clerk's staff and canvassers reviewed the signatures on the absentee ballot applications to confirm they matched those on the ballot return envelopes. They confirmed that the correct stub numbers were affixed to the top of the ballots and ran them through the machine.
They found one uncounted ballot from 2020, prompting laughter among the canvassers during an otherwise weighty affair.
Before the outstanding ballots were tabulated, Ecorse mayoral candidate Lamar C. Tidwell had received 55% of the primary vote with 565 votes to advance to the general election. But only 16 votes separated the second and third place candidates in the primary vying for a spot on the November ballot.
Mayoral candidate John E. Miller Jr. received 243 votes out of 1,035 cast, narrowly leading DeVonte Sherard who received 227 votes, according to the unofficial results posted Aug. 3.
The official certified results didn't change the outcome. They showed that Tidwell received 580 votes, Miller received 259 and Sherard won 229.
Candidates must file a petition for a recount within six days after the completion of the county canvass.
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: Uncounted primary ballots discovered in Ecorse Clerk's Office
