John Wisely, Christina Hall, and Eric D. Lawrence

Detroit Free Press

Critics say recount problems point to need for reform.

Clerks defend the accuracy of the optical scan readers.

Michigan scheduled to replace voting machines statewide by 2018.

Imagine for a moment: What if Michigan's 2016 presidential election had been a repeat of Florida's in 2000?

Imagine that Donald Trump's lead over Hillary Clinton had been just 200 votes instead of 10,000 and that the whole country was waiting on one last state to pick its winner.

Instead of examining hanging chads in Palm Beach County, the eyes of the world would instead be riveted on Wayne County, where one ballot box was sealed with duct tape and hundreds of precincts couldn't be recounted because of other errors.

A recount in Michigan in 2016 almost certainly wouldn't have mattered. But what if it would have?

"If this had been a scenario where Michigan would have been the deciding factor in a presidential election, we would have been embarrassed as a state," said Jocelyn Benson, a law professor at Wayne State University who founded the nonpartisan Michigan Center for Election Law. "It would have brought national attention to the inadequacies of an election system that is in desperate need of reform."

Michigan needs to update its voting equipment, train its poll workers better and embrace early voting and post-election audits that have worked successfully in other states, Benson said.

"We're just one close election from a complete meltdown," Benson said.

Lawrence Norden, deputy director of a voting-rights advocacy program at the Brennan Center at New York University, agreed.

"All the problems that happened in Detroit, so many issues, so much conversation," he said . "It's not something I would have wanted to imagine. We are in a much more polarized time now than we were, even in 2000."

The disputed 2000 presidential election turned on Florida's recount, which exposed numerous problems there. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately halted the recount, making George W. Bush president.

In Michigan's recount, scores of precincts, primarily in Detroit, but also in other places, could not be recounted because the number of ballots didn't match the number of voters in poll books. One precinct from Gibraltar couldn't be recounted because the ballot container was sealed with duct tape after the zipper broke and a replacement container couldn't be located.

Despite those problems, others point out the strengths of Michigan's system, including paper ballots and optical-scan readers. Figures released by the Secretary of State's Office late Friday show that after recounting about 2.1 million ballots, the final margin between Trump, who carried Michigan, and Clinton, changed by 102 votes in Clinton's favor.

Because the recount was halted in court, the certified results, a 10,704 vote win for Trump, stands as Michigan's official result.

In Oakland County, which recounted more than 521,000 ballots, the net difference in the presidential race was a gain of 34 votes for Trump. That's less than 1/100th of 1%.

"What it tells us is that our optical scan works, and it's accurate and it's always good to have a paper ballot as a backup," said director of elections Joe Rozell.

Recount law

Michigan's recount law is stricter than that in most states when it comes to which ballot boxes can be recounted. If even one ballot in the box doesn't match the number of voters in the pollbook, the precinct can't be subject to recount.

In some precincts, the mismatch was minimal, including precinct 11 in Rochester Hills, which couldn't be recounted because of a single stray vote. Several veteran poll workers told the Free Press that they suspect that the precincts that were off by one vote were likely the result of a mistake by the people who worked there.

Poll workers typically run a single test ballot through the machine before voting begins to make sure it's functioning properly. They are supposed to zero out the machine before they begin to run real ballots through it, but in a rush, it's easy to miss, they said.

The result would be precisely the kind of error that scuttled recounts in many precincts. Acting Dearborn clerk Lola Isiminger described another way the count can be off on Election Night.

Voters without identification must sign an affidavit swearing to their identity. The poll worker is supposed to note that, but sometimes they forget.

“If they didn’t make a notation, the count will be off," she said. "In a busy election like a presidential, it’s just kind of crazy. If they didn’t make a notation, it’s gonna be off one, and they say it’s not recountable.“

Rozell said that most of the state's election code was adopted in the 1950s after two gubernatorial races were recounted. Gov. G. Mennen (Soapy) Williams retained his office in 1950 and 1952 after recounts. The 1950 recount turned what had been a narrow loss to a win for Williams.

"Looking back, 60 years later, it's probably time to take a look at it," Rozell said.

To change the law, state election officials, clerks and lawmakers would have to meet to define some best practices that might make Michigan's system better.

Macomb County Clerk Carmella Sabaugh, who is retiring after 24 years, agreed.

"A lot of ballots are not recounted, maybe look at that law again," she said. "The laws were written a long time ago, when there were just paper ballots."

Detroit's troubles

Not all problems involved a single stray vote. In Detroit's precinct 152, recounters found 50 ballots in a container where more than 300 votes had been logged.

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.

The precinct was deemed not recountable for that reason. State Sen. Patrick Colbeck, R-Canton, and more than 20 other Republican lawmakers have asked the attorney general to investigate.

Detroit has long had problems with voting, including difficulties with recounts in 2013, 2009 and 2005.

Sometimes, the problems were mismatched poll numbers; other times it was broken or damaged seals. On Election Day 2016, more than 80 optical scan readers, which are about 12 years old, broke down in Detroit, complicating the original count.

Hayley Horowitz, a New York-based attorney working for the campaign of Jill Stein, which sought the recount, said Detroit's problems point to larger issues of funding and fairness.

"Unsurprisingly, a lot of these problems are concentrated in urban areas," she said. "The amount of funding and training and care that goes into these communities is very different. It seems that votes in some communities are treated with less respect."

► Related: Most states would recount Michigan's mismatched ballots despite flaws

► Related: Human error, including duct tape, hampers recount

New equipment needed

Most of Michigan's voting equipment was purchased in 2004 and 2005, said Fred Woodhams, spokesman for the Michigan Secretary of State's Office.

It was paid for with federal money provided under the Help America Vote Act, a law passed to update voting equipment across the nation after the 2000 presidential election when Florida's recount was ultimately halted by the U.S. Supreme Court.

"We've long realized that the equipment is reaching the end of its natural lifespan," Woodhams said. "If everything goes according to plan, the election equipment used on Election Day will have seen its last statewide election."

Woodhams said the Secretary of State's office is certifying a new generation of voting equipment for Michigan. The state has held on to $30 million of money left over from the Help America Vote Act, and the Michigan Legislature has appropriated another $10 million.

Woodhams said the state expects to certify several machine suppliers early in 2017, and local governments can then begin negotiating prices with them. The new machines, and the software to run them, should be in place for the next statewide election, which is in August 2018, Woodhams said.

Under the new system, Michigan will continue using paper ballots and optical scan readers, Woodhams said.

"Credit to Michigan for doing that," Horowitz said. "That's the ground zero for best practices."

Counties, along with cities, villages and townships, will have to share in the cost of the new equipment. The precise costs won't be known until the vendors are certified, Woodhams said.

"This time, they told us to budget $2,000 per precinct," said Isiminger, acting clerk in Dearborn, which has 48 precincts and another seven absentee ballot counting locations. "That's quite a chunk of change."

Best practices

While full-time clerks and other election officials can debate about the best system, much of it comes down to the people using it.

Human error explains many problems. Sabaugh said simple things such as making sure an 8 isn't a 5 and a 5 isn't a 7, can help reduce problems. Another reason a ballot container can't be recounted is the serial number on the seal doesn't match the one listed in the pollbook.

That could be a sign of tampering, but it also could be an election worker who transposed a couple of digits, Sabaugh said.

"Check it twice," she said.

But Horowitz said Michigan needs to implement routine audits of elections not only to prevent tampering, but also to instill confidence in the system. The most likely place for problems to occur comes from software hacks that could be introduced in the computer code used to run the counting machines, she said.

"It's possible that the machines could have been programmed to count things differently," she said. "Michigan does have audit procedures, but they are not for checking the paper record against the electronic record," Horowitz said.

Horowitz said it wouldn't be necessary to completely recount every election. Instead, she said, statisticians can devise math formulas that would draw a sample size to accurately audit one. By comparing the paper ballot record to the electronic record, they could spot problems if they occur or bolster confidence if they don't.

"I would hope that Michigan does something with this information," she said.

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