Twenty-three Republican state senators are calling on Attorney General Bill Schuette to investigate voting irregularities in Detroit and Wayne County discovered through the presidential election recount. At Wayne County’s recount Tuesday, election workers opened a Detroit precinct’s ballot box that was suppose to contain 306 ballots but only had 50 ballots, according to an election observer for President-elect Donald Trump. The missing ballots caused State Elections Director Chris Thomas to investigate the matter Wednesday while he was at Cobo Center for Wayne County’s recount. Thomas said Detroit Elections Director Daniel Baxter told him the ballots were left in a container that sits below the voting machine in Detroit’s precinct 152. “At the end of the night, they take those ballots out, put them in these metal ballot boxes and bring them to the city elections office,” Thomas said Wednesday. “For whatever reason, they got left in the tub below the tabulators and it wasn’t discovered until they brought them back in. At that point, they hadn’t been sealed, so they can’t be counted.”
State Sen. Patrick Colbeck, R-Canton, said the missing ballots in that one precinct coupled with issues surrounding numerous precincts that cannot be recounted because of other irregularities should be cause for Schuette to investigate. “This lemon of a recount may turn into lemonade from the stand point of helping us firm up the integrity of the voting process,” Colbeck said Wednesday.
Penny Crider of Livonia, Colbeck’s district director, said she was the Trump representative at the table when the box was opened and had 256 fewer ballots than records showed.
Crider said the missing ballots create doubt in the minds of voters of the validity of elections. “It delegitimizes the whole thing,” Crider told The Detroit News. “I feel very badly for those in Detroit because something needs to be fixed.”
Full Article: GOP senators seek probe of Wayne County election issues.