Calls for Janice Winfrey to resign as city clerk grow - 60% of Detroit precints wrong

[JBMcB]

I don't understand the election law provision under which a mismatch in ballots caused the recount to stop. Wasn't that the whole fucking point of the recount-- to simply count each PAPER ballot to account for equipment malfunctions or possible equipment tampering/hacking?

A recount isn't the place to check if your voting system is working or not.
If you want to audit the voting system, then you do an audit. Set up a dry run, run through the process, and check the results. Then compare them with the results of a real election, when you aren't time constrained and can do it properly.

There is going to be some margin of error, preferably pretty low. You want them to be the same during the audit than during the election. You don't do the election first then do the audit - it's basic process control theory.

[EastsideAl]

A recount isn't the place to check if your voting system is working or not.
If you want to audit the voting system, then you do an audit. Set up a dry run, run through the process, and check the results. Then compare them with the results of a real election, when you aren't time constrained and can do it properly.

Except that never happens, and no one is going to appropriate the funds to do it. So a recount procedure is, realistically, the only time we get to closely examine what actually happens with our ballots and how they are counted. I agree with the poster above that uncovering and rectifying such discrepancies would seem to be one of the basic reasons for, and functions of, a recount.

As a Detroit voter, given what's been discovered so far, I certainly think that I have a basic democratic citizenship interest in trying to find out what became of my vote and those of my neighbor and fellow city residents. And in making sure that the votes have been counted as fully and fairly as possible. Although, with Judge Goldsmith's ruling, I guess we don't have a right to find that out, and now almost certainly never will.

[MikeyinBrooklyn]

Aside from systemic corruption, Detroit's biggest problem with local government has been sheer incompetence. Duggan has successfully shaken a lot of the cobwebs out of city government, but Winfrey's domain is out of his control, as she is an elected officer in her own right. She should probably resign, but whoever is in the job needs to modernize and make professional the entire operation. I am not sure that the next hack who takes the job will do that. I'd love to see Chief Craig become city clerk.

[JBMcB]

Except that never happens, and no one is going to appropriate the funds to do it.

Spoke too soon

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/new...udit/95358702/

So a recount procedure is, realistically, the only time we get to closely examine what actually happens with our ballots and how they are counted. I agree with the poster above that uncovering and rectifying such discrepancies would seem to be one of the basic reasons for, and functions of, a recount.

No, a recount just counts the ballots again. If there is a discrepancy, you need to do a root cause analysis to figure out what happened. That's what an audit is for. You don't need to recount all the ballots to do this, which is why the recount was a waste of time if this was your end goal.

Think of it this way - a recount would have cost, for the sake of argument, $5 million. It wouldn't tell you what is causing any discrepancies, only if there are any. Or you can just do the audit, which would probably cost less than $5 million, and would tell you what is causing the discrepancies.

[Jimaz]

No citation?: fake news.

[snf]

Voter fraud by the demonrat partyis what it is. Plain and simple.i

[Bham1982]

Voter fraud by the demonrat partyis what it is. Plain and simple.i

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Detroit is so incompetent they lose a ton of ballots, which you somehow spin to "democrat voter fraud". Newsflash: urban areas vote overwhelmingly Democrat, so much so that some precients have Republican voting at or near 0.

Any local incompetence in urban electioneering harms whomever is on the Dem party line and benefits the Rep. candidate, because Detroit is reliably Dem.