I’m from Michigan and I attended the Board of State Canvassers meeting today; getting up at 05:30 to get to the 09:30 meeting in Lansing. There were about four dozen people in attendance of which about half were news people. There were nine television cameras. Trump’s team had two lawyers present and one for Stein. The meeting started a bit late and was promptly adjourned for an hour. It was punctuated by several breaks called by the Board and ran to well after lunch.
Some background. As I understand it, Michigan law states that any candidate who is on the ballot can file for a recount as long as they do so in a timely manner and pay the appropriate fee. As long as they meet those three criteria the recount is granted. The Michigan vote was certified on Monday of this week, Stein’s petition was filed on Wednesday, and the Trump campaign immediately objected. Understand that the recount was already approved and the meeting today (Friday) was to hear the objections to it.
Trumps lawyers spoke first and presented a grocery list of objections. Stein was not an “aggrieved candidate”, she would have no chance of winning in a recount, the recount would be costly, the recount would be time consuming, it would not be finished before the Electoral College vote, there have been no alleged instances of voter fraud in Michigan, and if there was a recount it had to be machine, not hand.
Stein’s lawyer spoke next and said that everything the Board had just heard meant nothing. Stein had followed the exact verbiage of Michigan law in requesting the recount and that nothing else mattered.
Representatives of several Michigan county clerk offices spoke in favor of the recount. They said there were eager to do the recount to show that their results were accurate. Trump’s continual claims of voter fraud during the campaign and his most recent comment of “millions” of illegal votes were mentioned several times. The county clerks wanted to demonstrate that there was no voter fraud. They also said that a manual recount is far easier and far faster than a machine recount, as Michigan uses scanners in most precincts.
Many Michigan voters fill out their ballot using a pen to blacken a spot next to the candidate they wish to vote for. The ballot is then fed into a scanner which tabulates it. To do a machine recount, the scanners would have to be setup again, calibrated, tested, and each ballot fed in again by hand. The clerks said it would be much simpler and faster to just look at the ballot and mark the results.
Some members of the public also spoke to say that citizens deserved a fair and honest vote tally that could be trusted, and why should there be an objection to that?
Then it came time for the board discussion and questions. The Democratic members of the board didn’t have much to say, but the Republican members peppered Stein’s lawyer with questions. One lady member in particular didn’t seem to get the idea that the granting of the recount is pretty much automatic and can’t really be objected to. The Board’s staff tried to explain this, and also said that all recounts in the history of the board have been manual where possible. The staff also said that they felt the recount could be finished in a timely manner.
The Republican members then made several motions, the most important of which was to approve the objections and stop the recount. And here’s why this meeting was pretty much an exercise in futility for Trump. The Board of State Canvassers consists of four members, two Republicans and two Democrats. Remember, that the original petition to recount was granted automatically, but the objections required a vote of the Board. The vote on each of the petitions was 2-2. A tie vote meant that the motion failed.
So each motion was voted on and failed, and as of today at 13:45 the manual recount in Michigan is approved to take place.
However… the Republican Attorney General of Michigan filed a motion with the State Supreme Court at the same time the Board hearing was taking place to stop the recount. So, that will be the next chapter in this saga.
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but the level of detail in your report is fantastic.
