MISfortunes
US election: broken machines could throw Michigan recount into chaos
US election: broken machines could throw Michigan recount into chaos
Broken polling machines may have put vote counts in question in more than half of Detroit's precincts and nearly one-third of surrounding Wayne County, possibly throwing the Michigan recount into chaos. If the discrepancies can't be solved by recounting every paper ballot in question by hand, a recount in those precincts simply won't happen.
Eighty-seven of Wayne County’s decade-old voting machines broke on election day, according to Detroit’s elections director, Daniel Baxter. He told the Detroit News, which first reported the story, that ballot scanners often jammed when polling place workers were trying to operate them. Every time a jammed ballot was removed and reinserted, he suspects the machine may have re-counted it.
Preliminary investigation by election officials in Wayne County found that 610 of the area’s 1,680 precincts could not reconcile the number of votes cast according to the machines with the number of ballots issued according to the electoral rolls. Detroit contains 662 of Wayne’s precincts; in 392 of those, the number of votes didn’t match up.
Baxter told the News he was confident a recount would match the ballots issued to the paper records, which are sealed and stored under guard. “I don’t think it’s going to be 100%,” he said, “but it never is with a recount.”
If hand-tallied ballots can’t resolve all the mismatches, the votes will stand in the counties where the errors remain.
State law rejects a recount in places where the two figures don’t match up: a precinct is ineligible to be recounted if the “number of ballots to be recounted and the number of ballots issued on election day as shown on the poll list or the computer printout do not match and the difference is not explained to the satisfaction of the board of canvassers,” the law says.




Um so I'm confused, if the recount shows discrepancies then they just pretend they didn't do a recount!? What's the point of a recount then?
A recount won't count if the number of paper ballots can't resolve the discrepancies. So yeah... it's a complete mess. The paper ballots are under guard by the sheriff's office precisely because they're so important in these circumstances.
Well, the Emperor did tell us it was rigged.