County clerks are preparing to recount, by hand, the 2016 presidential election and do it by Dec. 12. In Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties, that means nailing down a central location to perform the recount in each county and finding enough workers to carry out the tedious task of going over hundreds of thousands of ballots one at a time. “This is a monumental undertaking,” said Joe Rozell, director of elections in Oakland County, where 678,090 ballots must be reviewed one-by-one. “We’ve never had a countywide recount of this magnitude.” The window for a possible statewide recount opened on Monday when the Michigan Board of Canvassers certified the state’s presidential election results, which showed Republican nominee Donald Trump won the state by 10,704 votes. Green Party candidate Jill Stein has indicated she will request a recount in Michigan by Wednesday’s deadline. A recount would begin on Friday in the state’s 19 largest counties, which includes Oakland, Wayne and Macomb.
… Ballots in all counties will be recounted by bipartisan two-person teams. When precinct ballot boxes are delivered for the recount, ballot counters will first check to see that the seal on the boxes matches those in a corresponding poll book, then open them, Rozell said. The two-person team, one Democrat and one Republican, will examine each ballot and place it in an appropriate pile. There will be six piles for the candidates whose names appeared on the ballot and a seventh pile labeled “other” for write-in candidates, blank ballots and over-voted ballots, where more than one name was marked, Rozell said.
When the sorting is done, the counters will then count each pile and log the results.
The entire process will be supervised by the state, the county board of canvassers and lawyers and others representing the various campaigns.
Full Article: Michigan officials prepare for ‘monumental’ presidential recount.