John Wisely, Eric D. Lawrence, Christina Hall, and Bill Laitner

Detroit Free Press

Clerks say most mistakes are made in good faith.

State Senators call for investigation into irregularities in Detroit.

Numerous mistakes can exclude a precinct from recount.

Gibraltar’s Precinct 1 was not recountable Wednesday because the ballot container was improperly sealed — with duct tape.

MacGyver might have approved, but Wayne County recount officials didn't, noting that despite the tape job, it would be easy for someone to slip a hand inside. Recount workers at Cobo Center in Detroit had no choice but to mark the precinct as not recountable.

Gibraltar City Clerk Cynthia Lehr said it was an issue of equipment failure. The zipper that had kept the container closed had broken and she did not have a back up container. So she and her staff grabbed some duct tape to fix it.

Lehr said she knew that would make the precinct not recountable, but she said the vote tally was not compromised.

"No question for me that the count turned in to the county was correct," Lehr said, noting that the Election Day count stands. "They just can't change the count."

Ballot containers are supposed to be locked with special seals bearing serial numbers. Those numbers are supposed to be written in the poll book to ensure it hasn't been changed.

Municipal clerks say human error is the most common explanation for problems where election precincts can't be recounted, though most are harder to spot than the one in Gibraltar. Across the state, scores of precincts can't be recounted because the number of ballots in the box doesn't match the number of voters in the pollbook.

In those cases, the certified vote tally from the canvass stands.

Most clerks insist the mistakes are made in good faith, but state Sen. Patrick Colbeck, R-Canton, and some of his colleagues asked for a state investigation into pollbook irregularities, citing Detroit Precinct 152, where only 50 ballots were found in a container that should have had more than 300 votes.

“The state needs to investigate whether or not the cause of the ballot count discrepancies in Detroit and elsewhere throughout the state are the result of fraud or negligence,” Colbeck said.

State Elections Director Chris Thomas said he spoke with Detroit Elections Director Daniel Baxter, who told him that the missing ballots had been left in a bin underneath a vote tabulating machine rather than being placed in the container with the other ballots.

Because the number of ballots in the pollbook did not match what was in the container, the precinct was not recountable. It was one of 62 precincts and absentee ballot counting locations in Detroit that were not recountable on Tuesday, the first day of the recount in Wayne County.

Thomas said he was told other Detroit precincts had problems similar to Precinct 152, although it was not clear how many. Thomas said the state is awaiting a list of the precincts from Detroit. Such situations are rare, but not unheard of, Thomas said.

“It has happened before on occasion. It’s not something that happens regularly, but it does happen,” Thomas said.

Messages seeking comment were left for Baxter and Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey.

Most of the errors are a ballot or two under state law, and even those precincts can't be recounted, unless the Board of Canvassers is satisfied with the explanation.

Oakland County Elections Director Joe Rozell said his county began its recount Monday.

"I'm disappointed that we had three that couldn't be recounted," said Waterford Township Clerk Sue Camilleri. "I'm at a loss as to why this happened."

Camilleri said she recalls that one precinct was flagged during the canvass, the official counting of ballots done a couple weeks after the election. But the issue was resolved and the results were certified, she said.

She didn't know that the recount team in Oakland County had disqualified three of her township's precincts as having mismatched numbers.

Rochester Hills Clerk Tina Barton said the two precincts in her city that were deemed not recountable were both off by a single ballot.

" A person may have been issued a ballot, spoiled their ballot but decided they didn't want a new one," Barton told the Free Press in an e-mail. "Without having been physically present at the precinct, and without detailed remarks from your precinct workers, you don't really know the true cause."

Southfield Clerk Nancy Banks said she had not be told that four of precincts in her city couldn't be recounted. She said three precincts had issues that were resolved during the canvass.

"When it came to the canvass for Oakland County, we did have three precincts where the count was over by one," Banks said. "We came out with the count and we were told we were certified."

She said she wanted to get more information on why the county rejected the four precincts before commenting on them.

Sterling Heights City Clerk Mark Carufel said in an e-mail that a precinct that was not recountable because of a mismatch between the number of voters in the pollbook and the number of ballots was because "the tabulator likely indicated a ballot error and accepted the ballot without tabulating."

Warren City Clerk Paul Wojno said that of the six precincts in his city that were mismatched, two were precincts that were recounted by the Macomb County Board of Canvassers when it certified the election. He is awaiting information on the other four precincts.

Wojno said the board of canvassers re-ran 12 Warren precincts during its certification process. He said there may have been instances where the bag or box was then tied with a new security strip with a new number that was not recorded in the poll book.

Wojno said just because a precinct is mismatched, "it's not necessarily that something goes wrong."

He said more than 60,000 people voted in Warren in the Nov. 8 election and the city was off 18 total votes spread over 12 of the city's 58 precincts when the county board certified the election. Ten precincts were off by one vote; another off by three votes, and the last off by five votes, Wojno said.

He said most were attributed to test ballots — a ballot that an election worker puts into the machine to test it. If a worker doesn't zero out the tabulator and runs the tape, Wojno said, "you're off by one." In regard to other ballots, some were provisional ballots that were issued but not documented in the pollbook.

"A different yardstick is used by the county canvassing board and the recount board," Wojno said. "It's a crazy type of system."

For example, he said, if a precinct has 3,000 ballots, the county board counts used and unused ballots to look for a clerical error while the recounting board "doesn't have the ability to count unused ballots, just used ballots."

"If you only count used ballots and you're off by one, you can't search," Wojno said. "In some ways, that's unfair. It's like the recounting board is questioning the integrity of the board of canvassers. ... It's frustrating. We've already proven we were off by one. It's kinda like you throwing the baby out with the bath water sometimes."

In South Lyon, three of the, city's four precincts were not recountable, because the numbers didn't match.

Clerk Lisa Deaton said that the errors were simple mistakes.

"The ballots that were duplicates should have been put in a duplicated ballot envelope, but they didn't have any so they put them in the ballot container," throwing off the count, Deaton said.

In another case, a poll worker accidentally skipped a line in the pollbook, throwing off the count.

Camilleri, the Waterford clerk, said that training poll workers is important, but it can be difficult.

"There's a fine line between spending enough time to train them and spending so much time that their eyes glaze over," she said.

Contact John Wisely: 313-222-6825 or jwisely@freepress.com