An initial refusal to certify Wayne County’s election results led to drama in Detroit while several Georgia counties are facing scrutiny after finding additional votes in their hand recount. Will any of these revelations change the states’ results?
Summary
Wayne County, home of Detroit the largest population county in Michigan, was caught up in a back-and-forth drama until the county’s Board of Canvassers certified the election results Tuesday night.
- The four-person board, comprised of two Democrats and two Republicans, split along partisan lines on certification earlier in the day.
- The Republican members initially said they could not support certification of the results after finding inaccuracies in the poll books of Detroit precincts.
- According to a statement by Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, the Board of State Canvassers would have been able to certify the results had the county been unable to break the deadlock.
- Before the eventual agreement to certify the results, one of the Republican members suggestion to certify with the exception of precincts in Detroit. This was met with accusations of racism.
- Shortly before the final certification, President Trump tweeted about situation, commending the Republican board members for their “courage.”
- Meanwhile, in Georgia the statewide hand recount has turned up previously unreported votes in at least three counties. Cumulatively, they are not expected to change the results.
- In Fayette County, a memory card that had not been included in the first tally was found during the hand recount, having 2,755 votes on it. The majority of those votes went for President Trump.
- Floyd County was the first county to report uncovering a significant number of uncounted ballots, with 2,600 votes having been added. The discovery led the George Secretary of State to asking the county’s election head to resign.
- Nearly 300 votes were added to the results in Walton County during the recount.
- Additionally, Georgia’s Fulton County, which encompasses the city of Atlanta, is being investigated by the state for “generally bad management” of absentee ballots. State officials say Republican poll watchers and many precinct officials were sent home around 10:30PM on election night after county elections officials said vote-counting would pause for the night. Counting of ballots continued, however, until 1AM. There is also concern among state investigators about how absentee ballots were handled when the room they were kept in was flooded.
- As of Monday, most counties in Georgia appear to have completed the hand recount required by the Georgia Secretary of State.
- Vice’s coverage of the Georgia recount focused on the acrimony between Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and the Trump campaign. Raffensperger called Doug Collins, the leader of Trump’s recount efforts, a “failed candidate” and “liar.”
- The New York Times quoted an “elections law expert” and former chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party in their coverage of the Wayne County certification, accusing a Republican member of the county’s board of canvassers of racism in singling out Detroit.
- CNN similarly extensively evoked race in their coverage of the situation in Detroit.
- The Daily Caller highlighted the bipartisan agreement to ask the Michigan Secretary of State’s office to conduct an audit of the Detroit precincts in question after the second vote to certify the county’s results.
- In reviewing the news in Georgia, National Review pointed to the revelation of previously unreported votes as “a good idea to do recounts.”
- In a critique of the Trump campaign’s accusations against voting technology company Dominion, the Wall Street Journal notes many of the issues that turned up additional votes are due to human error, not faults in tabulation software.
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© Dallas Gerber, 2020
