scrubbedexpat091

If it were truly about out of balance precincts, why were they okay certifying Livonia which had the 2nd highest number of out of balance precincts?

"Republican board member, Monica Palmer, had made a motion to “certify the results in the communities other than the city of Detroit” — a move that would effectively disenfranchise one of the nation’s major predominantly Black cities."

"Ms. Palmer’s motion would have blocked certification for Detroit, where Black residents make up 78 percent of the population, and certified the results for communities like Livonia, where the Black population is 4.4 percent."

"City of Livonia, which had the second-highest number of out-of-balance precincts, but she won’t certify the city of Detroit,”


https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/17/u...n-results.html

lansbury

What were they certifying. Who won the election, in which case the mismatch isn't important if it couldn't effect the outcome. Or are they certifying the count in which case how can you certify it if the count is wrong. If they can't get the count of the number of voters and ballots right, isn't there an element of doubt that the actually count of votes cast for each candidate is wrong.

Leslie

The Democrats should refuse to acknowledge any of the Republican winners, accuse them all of fraud, and demand recounts in every single county/state election where a Republican won. This is ridiculous.

RICH

zzrmark

Not sure the party fancies picking up the bill for that kind of stunt. Trump's campaign is going to get walloped for 3 million bucks for the recount in two counties in Wisconsin, presumably payable up front if political morals are anything to go by.

Leslie

Yes, they have to pay up front. Has he paid?

kimilseung

Good question.
My assumption was that they certify the process, not each and every ballot, it is also my understanding that a mis-match is far from abnormal. and hasnt been a reason to not certify the overall process in the past.

Steerpike

"The Wisconsin Elections Commission has received a wire transfer from the Trump campaign for $3 million. No petition has been received yet, but the Trump campaign has told WEC staff one will be filed today"

scrubbedexpat091

The received the petition, looks like its a partial recount focusing on Milwaukee and Dane counties which lean liberal.

Milwaukee County, Biden beat Trump 317,270 votes to 134,357

Dane County, Biden beat Trump 260,185 to 78,800

Trump campaign would have needed to pay almost 8 million for a statewide recount.

Trump campaign said they chose these 2 counties as they had the most irregularities, but offered no evidence of such.

Milwaukee County has the largest black population in the state.

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/11/18/what-you-need-know-president-trumps-requested-recount-two-wisconsin-counties-votes/3762780001/

https://elections.wi.gov/node/7249 copy of petition here.

Mallory

It’s not really about the election though. He knows he has lost. It’s all about stirring the pot, and keeping his base riled up. He needs his base to fund his future endeavors. A TV company, a PAC, running for president, it all takes money. He has become addicted to being commander in chief, and cannot give it up. He is intoxicated by the crowds of Trumpskis. It has to continue - to feed his ego.

Steerpike

Very odd - in the article above, they say this:

"If election officials can determine which ballot was improperly cast, they will remove it.But in many cases, they don't know which ballot was wrongly counted because voters cast secret ballots. To remedy the situation, they randomly remove a ballot.

An example: During a recount, election officials might discover that a voter didn’t sign an absentee ballot envelope but the ballot was counted anyway. The election officials would then isolate the absentee ballots from that voting precinct and randomly remove one.

That practice can amplify the problem. If the wrongly cast ballot was for Trump and the election officials randomly removed a ballot for Biden, Trump would effectively net two votes that he shouldn’t have gotten — one vote because of the ballot that shouldn’t have been cast in the first place and one vote because the Biden ballot was subtracted from the total."
Contrary to what I've read elsewhere, this suggests envelopes are not traceable to ballots, so a 'bad envelope' situation in this case simply results in a random removal of a ballot! Very odd. But statistically, this should affect both candidates equally so shouldn't affect the outcome.

lansbury

What I don't understand is why each State has its own election rules, well I know why but it doesn't make sense. There should be uniform election rules which apply across all 50 States. One of which should be all ballots must be returned by close of election on polling day. Oregon has had only mail in voting since 1999, passed by a measure in 1998. Any ballot not received by a County elections office, or not in a ballot box by 8pm on polling day is void. It works, doesn't cause complaints and everyone knows to get their ballot in on time.

Giantaxe

You're not in a state that is into voter suppression. "States rights", as you know...

SpoogleDrummer

Only if the ballots were shared 50-50 if Biden has 80% of the ballots then a Biden ballot would be more likely to get randomly pulled.

scrubbedexpat091

A national uniform election for all 50 states and DC for federal offices would really require a constitutional amendment, and good luck getting that done.

Would be nice though if federal elections and state elections were separate.

Kind of like how Canada does it, federal elections are provincial elections are totally separate, heck even municipal elections are seperate.

Non-Partisan Elections Canada handles the federal elections.

Each province handles their own elections, BC has non partisan Elections BC that handles everything.

When it comes to ballots, counting, polling places etc, there is 0 political interference.

In BC we had a provincial election last month, one riding was super close like 70 vote difference, nobody cried foul, even when the winner was projected he made it clear the vote was close and needed to wait for the automatic judicial recount before it was official. He did win in the end once the judicial recount was done.

It's really refreshing, and no machines all done the old fashioned way, paper ballots and counted by hand. Heck in the provincial election my wife got a write in ballot since it was a snap election, didn't even need to write a candidate name, just the party you wanted to vote for.