Michigan strips two clerks in small town of election duties over hand-count plan

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Yahoo! News/Reuters

Updated Wed, October 30, 2024 at 6:47 PM EDT


SOUTHFIELD, Michigan (Reuters) - Two election officials in a small Michigan town have been stripped of their duties overseeing Tuesday's U.S. presidential election after they vowed to go ahead with a plan to handcount already tabulated ballots in an alleged violation of state law.

Tom Schierkolk and David LaMere, the clerk and deputy clerk in Rock River Township, were ordered by Michigan Bureau of Elections Director Jonathan Brater to refrain from administering the vote, according to a letter from Brater dated Oct. 28.

The development highlights distrust of voting equipment among some officials following years of falsehoods by Republican former President Donald Trump and his allies about their integrity. The false claims include the notion that rigged voting machines contributed to Trump's loss in 2020.

It also comes as election officials in Michigan and other swing states are on edge ahead of what polls indicate is a tight race between Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. Pro-democracy advocates have warned that some local Republican officials, including those on canvassing boards in parts of Michigan, could try to hold up certification if Trump loses.

Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/michigan-strips-two-clerks-small-210920311.html

[AverageOldGuy]

1. Hand-counting of ballots is notoriously inaccurate

When your homeowner's association votes for officers, the ballots are hand-counted . . . but there are only 50 or so members of the association, thus, hand-counting is simple, quick, and accurate. Hand-counting 8 MILLION ballots is another story entirely.

The Brennan Center for Justice has a series of brief articles titled [iElection Rumors in 2024.]

Here's a link to their article on hand-counting.

Hand counts fail when there are large numbers of ballots because humans are bad at tedious and repetitive tasks — the exact jobs computers are designed for. In a recent attempt to count ballots by hand, election workers initially counted one of every four ballots incorrectly — meaning the results were off by 25 percent, a discrepancy that can lead to the wrong candidate winning. Election officials routinely test voting machines before and after elections to ensure they are counting ballots correctly.

[questionseverything]

4. Votes are counted precinct by precinct....there's no millions of votes being counted together

The article goes on to say groups of less than a thousand voters could accurately be hand counted… the entire town in question only has 1100 people, so actual voters would be less than 1000

[questionseverything]

5. Votes are counted precinct by precinct....there's no millions of votes being counted together

The article goes on to say groups of less than a thousand voters could accurately be hand counted… the entire town in question only has 1100 people, so actual voters would be less than 1000

[Emrys]

7. The UK manages with hand counting

It even manages to hand-count votes under proportional representation systems, which can have complicated ranked stages and vote transfers. When recounts are ordered if results are close, the final anomalies are never that large.

Bank tellers used to be in great demand for vote counting because they could rip through stacks of paper accurately very quickly. When you're counting bank notes and there are checks and balances, your error rate has to be pretty low. I guess those skills are getting outmoded now, though.

But I guess this all depends on trust, adequate supervision, and goodwill, which may be lacking in some in the system.

[Old Crank]

2. How is the handcounting to be done?

I know they aren't going to do it but to have a true hand count you will need a lot of people.
You have one person reading the ballot. 1 person from each party observing that person is correct and relaying the correct data to a recorder. Who will need to be observed by the same number of observers as the previous step. So 6 people at a minimum to count and record.
Now how long will that take? One minute per ballot? One minute per ballot entry?

Lets not gfet into recounts.....

[PSPS]

3. "distrust of voting equipment among some officials"

Weasel reporting. It's not "distrust."

[mn9driver]

6. If they can't win, they will try to throw the election into doubt.

Precinct by precinct if necessary. I think it’s likely that some of these rogue MAGA election officials are going to end up jailed.

[Kaleva]

8. Some more background

"3 Rock River Township leaders resign, citing harassment from residents"

https://www.uppermichiganssource.com/2024/04/19/3-rock-river-township-leaders-resign-citing-harassment-residents/