Audit Of 20 Detroit Area Polling Places On The Horizon

The audit will look at precincts where the number of ballots in recount containers didn’t match number of voters.

Voting Vote Election 1

Jake Neher/WDET

The recount may be over, but the Michigan Secretary of State isn’t done with the ballots yet. They are in the process of planning an audit of about 20 Detroit area polling places.

During the short-lived recount, the Michigan Bureau of Elections discovered a number of places where the number of ballots in the recount containers didn’t match the reported number of voters.

Now, about 20 polling places in the Detroit area will be audited.

Fred Woodhams is with the Michigan Secretary of State’s Office. He said the Detroit elections staff said it was simple human error – but they plan to verify that.

“We want to give people reassurance about what happened and we will look into the matter thoroughly and if there’s more action that needs to be taken we will do that,” he said.

Woodhams said even if ballots didn’t go into the right box for the recount, the votes were counted on Election Day.

“Voters should know when they mark their ballot and they feed it into the tabulator, it is being counted,” he said. “So the fact that the ballots were not properly transferred into a field container doesn’t affect the fact that their ballot was counted.”

Author

  • Cheyna Roth is the co-host and creator of WDET's state politics podcast, MichMash. She has been an audio journalist for almost a decade, covering major events like presidential elections, college scandals, the Michigan Legislature and more, appearing on NPR and across Michigan public radio stations. Cheyna is also a senior producer and podcast host for Slate.com, having produced and hosted shows like Political Gabfest, The Waves, and What Next TBD. Also an author, Cheyna has written two true crime books and her written work has appeared in Broadly, Slate, and MLive, among others.