REPORT: More Than Third of Detroit Precincts Tabulated More Votes Than Actual Voters

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/rep...cincts-counted-more-votes-than-actual-voters/

REPORT: More Than Third of Detroit Precincts Tabulated More Votes Than Actual Voters

by Rachel Stockman | 9:16 pm, December 13th, 2016
Comments 279

Here’s a strange voting story out of Michigan that definitely deserves more attention. After The Detroit News requested the data, they discovered voting machines in more than one-third of all Detroit precincts registered more votes than they should have during the 2016 presidential election. Hillary Clinton overwhelmingly beat out Donald Trump in Detroit and Wayne County. Clinton got*519,444 votes to Donald Trump’s 228, 993 in that area, even though he ultimately won the state.

So why did this happen? Officials blame human error, but agree the findings are quite troubling. According to the newspaper report, optical scanners at 37 percent of the city’s precincts*tabulated*“more ballots than the number of voters tallied by workers in the poll books.”

“There’s always going to be small problems to some degree, but we didn’t expect the degree of problem we saw in Detroit. This isn’t normal,” Krista Haroutunian from*Wayne County Board of Canvassers, told the newspaper. *The Michigan Secretary of State ‘s election director announced plans for an audit of the election results.

Michigan was one of the state’s that Jill Stein targeted*for a recount, but a federal judge put an end to a recount last week. The Michigan State*Court of Appeals said*the recount should never have started because Stein was not an “aggrieved” candidate. The Michigan Supreme Court refused to take up*Stein’s appeal.

“More evidence election administration in Detroit is a national embarrassment,” University of California-Irvine Law Professor Rick Hasen said in his election blog. *“I don’t suspect malfeasance, but rather incompetence. There needs to be an audit. There needs to be better training. And there needs to be rolling out of better voting equipment, which I know is planned.”

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/detroit-voting-machine-failures-were-013303554.html

Detroit Voting Machine Failures Were Widespread on Election Day

Charlotte Alter
Time
Dec 13, 2016 5:33 PM

More than 80 voting machines in Detroit malfunctioned on Election Day, officials say, resulting in ballot discrepancies in 59% of precincts that raise questions about the reliability of future election results in a city dominated by Democratic and minority voters.

“This is not the first time,” adds Daniel Baxter, elections director for the city. “We’ve had this problem in nearly every election that we administer in the city of Detroit.” Baxter says that the machines were tested for accuracy before election day in accordance with state and federal guidelines, but that sometimes the machines “hit up against each other and malfunction” as they’re being transported to the precincts.

The machines were optical scanners, meaning they registered and counted the votes marked on paper ballots. Many of the machines jammed over the course of election day, perhaps because Michigan had a two-page ballot this year, which meant that paper ballots were collected but inconsistently recorded by the machines. Michigan does not have early voting, so any mechanical malfunction would necessarily happen on election day, since that’s the only day the machines are used. That’s why so many machines malfunctioned at the same time. “You don’t expect a laptop to last 10 years, and you shouldn’t expect a voting machines to last 10 years,” says Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey.

The errors were found as part of a recount process prompted by losing Green Party candidate for President Jill Stein. The Michigan recount was halted last week after a judge determined that Stein, who has urged recounts in several states, did not qualify as an “aggrieved party” in the election, making her request for a recount invalid. Trump won Michigan by 10,704 votes. “The recount campaign was premised on the notion that we deserve a voting system we can trust,” said Dr. Jill Stein in a press call Tuesday about the recount efforts. “No, we do not have a voting system we can trust.”

But even if the recount had moved forward, the precincts in question would not have been eligible for the recount because of an obscure 1954 Michigan law that prevents recounting votes if there is any discrepancy in ballots. As a result, those ballot counting machines that experienced mechanical malfunction are ones that cannot be recounted to divine voter intent from the paper ballots.

The state’s voting laws also specify that if there’s any kind of mistake made by a poll worker, even something as small as forgetting to tally one person on the entrance log, the votes in that precinct cannot be recounted. “Our laws don’t allow for human error,” said Winfrey. “That’s unfortunate.”

Pamela Smith, president of voting-accuracy organization Verified Voting, said she received enough calls from the Detroit area on Election Day to cause her to call a state official to express concern. “They were running out of storage space for the ballots,” she says, noting that paper ballots were piling up on desks and other unsecured surfaces as technicians raced to fix the machines. “If you’ve only got a partial count from a voting place, something has to happen to the rest of the ballots.”

Winfrey and Baxter say the city will be getting new voting machines in 2017.

“There’s a dire need to modernize our system of running election across the country and particularly in Michigan,” says Jocelyn Benson, former dean of Wayne State Law School and founder of the Michigan Center for Election Law, who noted the large number of voters in the state who were recorded leaving their ballots partially blank. “When you have 75,000 votes for president that are blank, that could be because 75,000 people didn’t vote for President, or it could be because you have 75,000 votes that weren’t counted.”

Even if the recount had moved forward, Clinton would have been unlikely to have picked up the state. Before the recount was halted, 2.1 million votes were recounted, and only 102 of those were added to Clinton’s tally. If she had won Michigan after a recount, Clinton would have been unlikely to win the Electoral college without Wisconsin, Pennsylvania or Florida. Trump’s victories in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were verified earlier this week.

But the Detroit voting fiasco illustrates the larger problems of a voting system. Without post-election audits to catch problems, Michigan is unlikely to radically improve its election procedure anytime soon. “By doing audits you actually increase voter confidence,” says Smith of Verified Voting. “And that’s not gonna happen.”

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2016/12/12/vote-audit/95358702/

Detroit’s voting irregularities spur state audit

Jonathan Oosting , Detroit News Lansing Bureau 1:32 p.m. EST December 13, 2016

Video

Lansing — Voting irregularities in Detroit have spurred plans for an audit by Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson’s office, Elections Director Chris Thomas said Monday.

State officials are planning to examine about 20 Detroit precincts where ballot boxes opened during the recount had fewer ballots than poll workers had recorded on Election Day.

“We’re assuming there were (human) errors, and we will have discussions with Detroit election officials and staff in addition to reviewing the ballots,” Thomas said.

DETROIT NEWS
Records: Too many votes in 37% of Detroit’s precincts

The Detroit precincts are among those that couldn’t be counted during a statewide presidential recount that began last week and ended Friday following a decision by the Michigan Supreme Court.

The recount problems were the worst in Detroit, where discrepancies meant officials couldn’t recount votes in 392 of the city’s 662 precincts, or nearly 60 percent. State law that bars recounts for unbalanced precincts or ones with broken seals.

Democrat Hillary Clinton overwhelmingly prevailed in Detroit and Wayne County. But Republican President-elect Donald Trump won Michigan by 10,704 votes, or 47.5 percent to 47.3 percent.

The Detroit News last week was first to report that more than half of Detroit would be ineligible for the recount because of the irregularities. The results were based on county reports obtained by The News.

Republican state senators last week called for an investigation in Wayne County, including one precinct where a Detroit ballot box contained only 50 of the 306 ballots listed in a poll book, according to an observer for Trump.

City officials have told state officials that ballots in that precinct were never taken out of a locked bin below the voting machine tabulator on Election Day, said Secretary of State spokesman Fred Woodhams.

“That’s what we’ve been told, and we’ll be wanting to verify it,” Woodhams said. “At any rate, this should not have happened.”

The state is not calling the audit an investigation, “but based on what we find, it could lead to more,” he said.

City Clerk Janice Winfrey and Elections Director Daniel Baxter did not return messages.

Sen. Patrick Colbeck, R-Canton, called the planned audit “a good place to start” that could help determine whether Detroit elections workers “followed the correct procedures” or “fraudulent procedures” on Election Day.

Whether a poll book mismatch suggests there are too few or too many ballots in any given precinct, “it’s concerning,” said Colbeck, who spearheaded the request for probe. “It’s supposed to reconcile to zero.”

It’s unclear how many votes were added in Detroit.

joosting@detroitnews.com
Staff Writer Joel Kurth contributed

54 COMMENT

 

[Medical Maven]

Who knows how close the popular vote was? And I would love to see the popular vote results with multi-generational welfare families with no one working in the household removed from the tallies.

There is something very wrong with the direction of the country being decided for eight years by fraud and that cohort of "voters".

 

[Marthanoir]

It's the Russians, they hacked Detroit changed the ballots to Hillary accidently instead of Trump,

It's the only explanation that makes sense, or are we supposed to believe that all those Americans really did vote Trump, the media was biased all along and Hillary would stoop to anything to achieve power,





That's sarcasm son, I say, I say sarcasm......

 

[Tristan]

Who knows how close the popular vote was? And I would love to see the popular vote results with multi-generational welfare families with no one working in the household removed from the tallies.

There is something very wrong with the direction of the country being decided for eight years by fraud and that cohort of "voters".

Really!

Let's count the ways the insidious voter fraud happens:

Double counting ballots (in the 'right' areas),
Dead people making it to the polls (one report I read mentioned over 3 million deceased still on voter rolls country wide; don't know how many become zombie voters)
Non-Citizen voting
Judges ordering polls to remain open is some areas (I assume the 'right' areas, though I don't recall hearing that happening this past November)
Some folks have been known to vote in two different states, one or both by absentee ballot
Voters registered at locations which have no postal service...

Yet we're continually assured there's no widespread or systemic voter fraud.

I remember a comment I read somewhere that went: "Ya know, Grandpa always voted Republican his whole life, then after he passed on he started voting Democrat."

 

[Hfcomms]

It's the Russians, they hacked Detroit changed the ballots to Hillary accidently instead of Trump,

Yeah...I guess the Russians are responsible for that too. They have about beat that stalking-horse dead.

 

[Thunderbird]

"Human error" you betchum Red Ryder.

 

[undead]

and these jackasses worry about Putin when we have illegalities staring us in the face

 

[Dobbin]

and these jackasses worry about Putin when we have illegalities staring us in the face

Um. Illegalities in the White House no less. And they talk to us with teleprompters.

Dobbin

 

[Publius]

To think they have not even given a thought to looking into voter registrations and seeing how many of them are real or living persons.

 

[Tristan]

To think they have not even given a thought to looking into voter registrations and seeing how many of them are real or living persons.

Nor will they.

I think this is the 2nd most important issue for Trump's administration. The first being, Supreme Court Justice nominations.

 

[Dozdoats]

Genuinely malfunctioning machines would report about as many FEWER ballots as MORE ballots.

A "skew" in favor of all more ballots says - CHEATING.

 

[Mark D]

When all is said and done, I'm guessing Trump garnered the vast majority of REAL votes in the country.

 

[Housecarl]

For links see article source.....
Posted for fair use.....
http://ijr.com/2016/12/756000-jill-...st-exposed-sketchy-voter-activity-in-detroit/

Nation

Jill Stein's Recount Crusade Isn't Helping Dems -- It Just Exposed Sketchy Voter Activity in Detroit

By*Parker Lee
an hour ago

When Donald Trump claimed in early 2016 that the election system was “rigged,”*political pundits were quick to dismiss the idea — calling it a ploy to “provide sore losers with a way to save face.”

Following Trump's Election Day victory, those claims suddenly seemed to take*on a whole new validity. Jill Stein's multi-million dollar recount effort even earned the support of the Clinton campaign.

Mere days after the Michigan Supreme Court put an end to Stein's recount attempt*in their state, though, Reuters reports*that a disturbing finding emerged from “heavily Democratic Detroit” —*one that*might not bode well for the Clinton campaign.

On Tuesday,*The Detroit News revealed that “voting machines in more than one-third of all Detroit precincts registered more votes than they should have during last month’s presidential election.”

Specifically, records from Wayne County — which includes Detroit — indicate that there were more votes recorded than there were voters*in 248 out of the city's*total 662 precincts.

Following the news,*State Elections Director Chris Thomas indicated that the state would conduct an audit of at least 20 precincts in Detroit:

Chairwoman of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers*Krista Haroutunian echoed*the concerning*nature of these findings:

“There’s always going to be small problems to some degree, but we didn’t expect the degree of problem we saw in Detroit.

This isn’t normal."

While at first it might look like troubling news for President-elect Trump — who*took Michigan by roughly 10,000 votes — any significant reduction in votes out of Detroit seems more likely to hurt Clinton.

As The Hill notes:

Democrat Hillary Clinton overwhelmingly won in Detroit and in Wayne County, which historically has voted for Democrats.

The Associated Press reported that Clinton won 95 percent of Detroit’s vote.

If the audit does end up yielding fewer votes for Clinton in Wayne County, it wouldn't be the first time the former presidential hopeful has been burned by Stein's recount efforts.

In Wisconsin*— the only state to actually conduct a complete recount so far — President-elect Trump actually increased his margin of victory by an additional 162 votes.

 

[Richard]

So why did this happen? Officials blame human error, but agree the findings are quite troubling. According to the newspaper report, optical scanners at 37 percent of the city’s precincts*tabulated*“more ballots than the number of voters tallied by workers in the poll books.”

“There’s always going to be small problems to some degree, but we didn’t expect the degree of problem we saw in Detroit. This isn’t normal,” Krista Haroutunian from*Wayne County Board of Canvassers, told the newspaper. *The Michigan Secretary of State ‘s election director announced plans for an audit of the election results.

Look the bottom line is that these local Government officials are incompetent but you can't criticise or sack useless staff in Government. This should be rectified, the culprits sacked and the situation corrected.

 

[PghPanther]

End the nonsense..............

Make filing a tax form in a given year of any election a requirement in order to be eligible to vote....period.

Tax payers are the boss.....they foot the bill they should determine who will represent where and how their money is spent by the government.

No more voting by those who don't contribute to the funds that the government spends...............

Sorry if it kicks off a few eligible people out there who don't have to file taxes (exceptions can be made on a one to one basis if you like) but this one requirement eliminates the illegal immigrants, the physically dead phony votes, the welfare leeches, the tax dodgers, and voter replications of the same person along with any others liabilities out there.

The idea of being born here does not come with such a privilege until you have earned it.........change the laws and the Constitution/Bill of rights if you have to, but make it the requirement........

 

[Housecarl]

End the nonsense..............

Make filing a tax form in a given year of any election a requirement in order to be eligible to vote....period.

Tax payers are the boss.....they foot the bill they should determine who will represent where and how their money is spent by the government.

No more voting by those who don't contribute to the funds that the government spends...............

Sorry if it kicks off a few eligible people out there who don't have to file taxes (exceptions can be made on a one to one basis if you like) but this one requirement eliminates the illegal immigrants, the physically dead phony votes, the welfare leeches, the tax dodgers, and voter replications of the same person along with any others liabilities out there.

The idea of being born here does not come with such a privilege until you have earned it.........change the laws and the Constitution/Bill of rights if you have to, but make it the requirement........

Well you can file at tax return even if you don't pay tax...

 

[Mark D]

The country is LONG past due for a revision of how we cast votes, and, how we harshly punish voter fraud.

If photo ID, proof of citizenship, and a purple finger are good enough for Iraq, it's good enough for us... And, if you're too lazy to make it to the polls, you're too lazy to deserve a vote.

I really like the idea of only tax payers, or retired tax payers, being able to vote. If you don't have skin in the game, you shouldn't be allowed to choose how other people's money is spent.

 

[Ragnarok]

I am SHOCKED.... Said no one...

 

[Richard]

The bottom line is that your electoral roll maintenance systems need to be effectively implemented, nothing more nothing less, if not the Government Employees responsible should be sacked.............not only that they have to deal with electorates who do not respond to requests for updates to the electoral system, they also have to be dealt with.........