(Source: MIRS.news, Published 12/21/2022) The voting expansion ballot question, Proposal 2, netted six additional "no" votes and the abortion access question, Proposal 3, netted 109 additional "yes" votes as the Board of State Canvassers wrapped up Wednesday's recount by rejecting more than 100 appealed challenges.
Proposal 2 has now passed 2,586,269 to 1,725,130 or 59.99% to 40.01%
Proposal 3 has now passed 2,482,498 to 1,898,913 or 56.66% to 43.34%.
Neither result changed by even a hundredth of one percent.
The Canvassers meticulously went through the recount challenges for over six hours and denied nearly every one of them.
One challenger tried to get an entire ballot thrown out because the ink used to fill in the circles bled through the paper. Another said the ballot was too crumpled. Another said the entire ballot was spoiled because the name "Mickey Mouse" was filled in as a write-in for one office.
Canvassers grumbled about how the whole exercise was a waste of time. The few dozen activists from the Election Integrity Force who bird-dogged the procedure saw a public body they felt was exercising nonfeasance, misfeasance or malfeasance by refusing to look deeper into fraud.
Changing the results wasn't the point, said Dan HARTMAN, a Petoskey attorney. The precincts selected for the recounts had voting irregularities that advocates wanted the Board of State Canvassers to investigate.
If the seal on a ballot container is broken, shouldn't that be the first precinct to be investigated, not one that is immediately taken off the table for a recount?
Canvassers didn't bite. At one point, Canvasser Mary Ellen Gurewitz told Hartman, "If you want to take us to court, have at it."
Their point was that state law doesn't give them the authority to go on what they saw as "fishing expeditions.
Folks rallied to action today by the Election Integrity Force and other groups, made the point that everybody seemed to be passing the buck. Among the local clerks, the county canvassers, law enforcement and state canvassers, everyone was passing the buck.
Nobody wanted to look into how people who should not have voted in the 2022 election or the 2020 election still found a way to vote. Who looks into how zippers on secure election ballot bags get ripped open? Who is really policing the elections?
In 2020, Hartman said somebody voted from his property who doesn't live there. Activists from across the state have several other examples of where this happened, but nobody wants to investigate it, everybody wants to pass the buck.
"Ballot box stuffing is the oldest game in the book," he said.
Hartman presented a 2013 letter from former Attorney General Bill Schuette regarding Detroit's elections. It reads that the statute requires that "a full and complete investigation into allegations" regarding elections must be done by canvassers. Whether it's the county or state doesn’t matter, he said.
They are allowed to subpoena witnesses, open boxes and call upon local law enforcement to help. If there's probable cause to take any issues further, Schuette wrote at the time that his office would get involved.
The recount didn't yield this reaction and that's what had Hartman frustrated.
Attorney Mark Brewer with Goodman Acker said the results were completely predictable. The advocates were barking up the wrong tree. The Board of State Canvassers' job is to run a recount, not act as an investigative body.
If Hartman and his crew want clerks and Boards of Canvassers to have this power, they should talk to the Legislature.
"They can go to court. They can go to the Legislature," Brewer said. "They can have plenty of other remedies. This is not some kind of broad investigative body. They asked for a recount and they got exactly what they were entitled to."
