The board charged with certifying election results in Michigan’s largest county is asking Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s office to investigate after problems with tracking ballots in Detroit’s primary, which one official described as a “perfect storm.”
Counts for ballots in about 72% of Detroit’s absentee voting precincts for the Aug. 4 primary election were out of balance without an explanation, according to information presented Tuesday to the Wayne County Board of Canvassers. The number of ballots tracked in precinct poll books did not match the number of ballots counted.
The election results weren’t incorrect, said Jonathan Kinloch, a Democrat and one of the canvassing board’s four members. But, he said, something had gone wrong in the process of tracking ballots precinct by precinct.
I flagged the extensive problems in 2016 in Detroit in Election Meltdown. This is bad but unsurprising. The state needs to do more about Detroit.