Michigan recount has exposed thoroughly inept and suspicious original counting process

[flamingdem]

http://www.palmerreport.com/news/mohican-recount-exposes-thoroughly-inept-original-counting-process/402/

Just one day into the court-ordered Michigan statewide recount, and it’s already become clear why Michigan’s state officials had fought so hard against a recount to begin with. From mysterious holes torn in ballot containers, to mismatched ballot tracking numbers, it’s quickly become apparent that Michigan’s original vote counting effort – which narrowly named Donald Trump the winner in a shockingly unrealistic result – was either extraordinarily sloppy or extraordinarily suspicious.

In fact, some officials in Michigan are now flat out claiming that their precincts can’t be recounted, because the damage done during the original counting process makes it impossible for them to be properly recounted. Of course such a circular argument, that the destruction of evidence by those being investigated should be grounds for not continuing with the investigation, can’t possibly hold up in court. And it suggests that third party candidate Jill Stein, who forcibly initiated the Michigan recount, may have to go right back to the federal judge in question in order to force these precincts to go ahead and recount the ballot containers they tampered with.

[elleng]

1. Michigan, down the drain.

The whole system is wrecked.

[longship]

2. I didn't think it possible with paper ballots.

But with the GOP in charge, I suppose that just about anything is possible.

But why leave a forensic trail? Holes in ballot boxes? Really? That's just amateur night stuff.

Boggles the mind.

[TheFrenchRazor]

4. who's going to do anything about it? seriously. nt

[byronius]

5. Said Hitler before annexing the Sudentenland.

Sorry, just know this routine from history. No boundaries, no truth, a headlong plunge into violent chaos -- and who's going to do anything about it?

Until the body count gets high enough. that is. Then it's all 'never again!' for fifty years.

[TheFrenchRazor]

3. nothing to see here folks, move along... nt

[arthritisR_US]

6. Every country in the world who has been subjected to the

holy than thou rhetoric af the United Snakes of Amurika and their election monitors should now be saying "clean up your own country before criticizing ours, hypocrites ".

[DFW]

7. If the results can't be verified...

...then why should they be accepted at all?

Expensive and cumbersome as it is, Michigan should vote again, with federal observers monitoring the vote and its tally. Mandatory ten year sentence without parole for deliberate manipulation or interference with the process.

[Grey Lemercier]

21. There is no such thing as a do-over, its unconstitutional

[UCmeNdc]

8. The voting doesn't matter, the people who count the votes matter.......

[MichMan]

9. Blaming this on a conspiracy between state and local election officials is ridiculous

While the situation is discerning, you do realize that 90% of the precincts that can't be recounted voted overwhelmingly for Hillary in counties that have been controlled by Democrats for decades.

This source fails to mention why these strong blue precincts, would as they claimed, "destroy evidence" in concert with the Republicans to somehow ensure a Trump win.

While the issues are random & sporadic state wide, the overwhelming majority are in just 2 counties, Wayne (Detroit) and Genesee (Flint). While some like to blame the machines, the same machines are used state wide. Elections are conducted n the local level

The issue is most certainly therefore caused by poorly trained or supervised election staff who didn't take due diligence to reconcile the totals before sealing the boxes. When the machine appears to not accept a ballot, they did not follow the procedures to reset the counter, but fed ballots in multiple times thus allowing extra votes. Since this occurred most frequently in counties that voted overwhelmingly for Hillary, this most likely gave Hillary extra votes.

The situation is analogous to bank tellers not being able to balance at the end of the day. They are forced to stay until the issue is reconciled, not decide it is close enough because they want to go home.

The state law has been in effect since 1954 that deems ballot boxes with irregularities are not to be recounted making the original results stand. This situation needs to be fixed moving forward, but to imply it was done intentionally to aid Trump is not in any way reasonable.

[FBaggins]

10. Denial mixed with confirmation bias can give some whacky results

Add a "journalist" willing to feed both for personal profit and the recipe is complete.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

11. Can we get this from a reliable news source?

Palmer Report is one guy who is NOT a journalist, and who spreads his own brand of fake and sensationalist "news".

Sources matter.

[flamingdem]

14. Refute one thing he has written

to make your point correctly please.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

15. Well, there's this gem that snopes debunked.

http://www.palmerreport.com/news/wisconsin-recount-observers-discover-five-vote-counting-machines-with-tampered-seals/345/

http://www.snopes.com/wisconsin-recount-observers-find-voting-machines-broken-seals/

Face it, Bill Palmer is NOT a legitimate news source.

[radius777]

20. I see nothing in that Snopes article which refutes anything.

In many ways, Snopes is just another MSM false equivalency website, of the type that gave us Trump.

Here is another recent Snopes article by that same author:

http://www.snopes.com/harry-david-says-company-neutral-racism-neo-nazis/
Brute Basket
Social media users claimed that representatives told them the company has no opinion about racism, but the company says otherwise.
Kim LaCapria
Dec 07, 2016
Claim: The company Harry & David had no concerns about advertising with Breitbart, saying they were "neutral" on issues of racism and anti-Semitism.
...
The Twitter account only seemed to have been activated after the 8 November 2016 election, and the account's tweets primarily engaged with companies its operator accused of placing ads with the media outlet Breitbart. The account's user appeared to take the view that Breitbart is a hub of neo-Nazism and racism. However, while Breitbart is an openly politically conservative web site, classification of it as definitively anti-Semitic or racist is subjective. In a November 2016 Los Angeles Times profile, company executives firmly rejected that characterization, saying that several senior-level employees (as well as the late Andrew Breitbart, its founder) are Jewish:
...

Anyone with half a brain knows that Breitbart has become an alt-right/white nationalist hub, even though it may not have started out that way.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

24. Snopes is more accurate than Palmer could ever hope to be.

But hey, keep following fake news.

[FBaggins]

25. Would several be ok?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=2644325

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=2645910

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=2648178

His latest error was this one:

http://www.palmerreport.com/politics/jim-crow-in-michigan-87-vote-machines-broke-in-americas-blackest-city-on-election-day/443/

Jim Crow in Michigan: 87 vote machines broke in America’s blackest city on Election Day

Here, Palmer tries to leave the reader with the impression that "broken" ballot scanners could jave a "jim Crow" effect on minority ballots not being counted. Clearly, you're expected to believe that some of their votes were lost and cannot be recovered because the same error makes them ineligible (under a ridiculous MI law) for recounting.

Unfortunately, almost the opposite is most likely true. The "broken" machines were actually jammed when inserting some ballots, not inoperable. The polling place staff would clear the jam and reinsert the ballot. Sometimes this meant that the number of ballots in the box would be lower than the number that the scanner counted. That does make the stack "unrecountable" by that law... but the impact would be that some votes from that precinct were counted twice. Also - while the MI law on the subject is ridiculous... the end result would be that Clinton would artificially gain from the error and would not lose those extra votes because the precinct wouldn't be part of the recount.

Exactly the opposite of Jim Crow.

[jmg257]

12. Should still be able to count the actual ballots. They know why the machine counts were off,

but if the number of ballots match the number of voters in the poll books, then the mismatch is understood and the ballots should be hand counted.

"Eighty-seven of Wayne County’s decade-old voting machines broke on election day, according to Detroit’s elections director, Daniel Baxter. He told the Detroit News, which first reported the story, that ballot scanners often jammed when polling place workers were trying to operate them. Every time a jammed ballot was removed and reinserted, he suspects the machine may have re-counted it."

There are three vote totals: the total number of votes the electronic ballot scanners report; the total number of people who signed the electoral roll, or “poll book”; and the total number of paper ballots filled out and stored in sealed containers. The poll books and the electronic ballot scanners do not match, so the paper ballots will be counted by hand. If hand-tallied ballots can’t resolve all the mismatches, the votes will stand in the counties where the errors remain.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/05/us-election-recount-michigan-donald-trump-hillary-clinton

[colsohlibgal]

13. 2000 Deja Vu

The right wants to limit the vote in areas with lots of democrats, then they want no recounts where they are even possible.

2000 was election theft I have little doubt it was so this year as well.

I would hope that the non racist non homophobe white working class who got hoodwinked into voting for this fraud are quickly learning they have been conned.

We need to protest this fraud but also go local, go county, go school board, get out and vote in the midterms.....if we are still having elections by then, this gang the creep is assembling is far right and crazy.

Time to dig in and fight and take our nation back from the brink.

[ChetSinger]

16. A MI recount would be good but neither party wants it now

Republicans don't want a recount because their candidate's hanging onto a tight win. Democrats don't want it because it will call national attention to their ballot-box stuffing that's been revealed in Detroit. I think Jill's done good in Michigan, but neither party wants her to continue there now.

[flamingdem]

18. Post a link about ballot box stuffing in Michigan please

Otherwise you are spreading bs

[ChetSinger]

19. Sure, here:

From the Detroit News: Half of Detroit votes may be ineligible for recount

Michigan’s largest county voted overwhelmingly for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, but officials couldn’t reconcile vote totals for 610 of 1,680 precincts during a countywide canvass of vote results late last month.

Most of those are in heavily Democratic Detroit, where the number of ballots in precinct poll books did not match those of voting machine printout reports in 59 percent of precincts, 392 of 662.

According to state law, precincts whose poll books don’t match with ballots can’t be recounted. If that happens, original election results stand.

“It’s not good,” conceded Daniel Baxter, elections director for the city of Detroit.

He blamed the discrepancies on the city’s decade-old voting machines, saying 87 optical scanners broke on Election Day. Many jammed when voters fed ballots into scanners, which can result in erroneous vote counts if ballots are inserted multiple times. Poll workers are supposed to adjust counters to reflect a single vote but in many cases failed to do so, causing the discrepancies, Baxter said.

In short, the machines in Detroit have too many votes in them. The elections director's excuse is that when ballots were inserted multiple times into flaky machines that the poll workers "failed" to subsequently adjust the machine's counters. Right. If Republicans made an excuse like that would you believe them? I sure wouldn't.

Jill has uncovered nastiness in MI, just maybe not the kind she was expecting.

[BSdetect]

17. US elections can never be won as long as we have these states running the game

Its just bleeding obvious that they employ devious methods to get results.

Its a Federal election and oughyt to be run by Federal rules.

This country has become a laughing stock.

Democracy my arse.

[Grey Lemercier]

22. Welcome to the US Constitution

Founding fathers not looking so brilliant over the multiple century sweep are they.

The Republicans have gamed the system from top to bottom and are one POTUS election away (assuming Ginsburg and Breyer hold on till 2020 and thus make that election about stopping a 7-2 RW court for 20 years)from bringing a multi decade theocracy of robber barron corporatist greed and virulent hatred of all things not white, male, hetero, and xian. They already almost have that power right now.

[flamingdem]

26. You need to add poor and even middle class to your

hatred list. The Founding fathers thought people had some integrity - how were they to know we'd be dealing with these deplorables.

[UCmeNdc]

23. The Democratic Party is losing because of weak state government control

The GOP control the state governments so they control the elections.

[flamingdem]

27. Yes and control means

stealing as we've seen in the past couple of weeks.

I think Rick Scott stole the election in Florida the last time too.