Here's how initial unofficial election results got messed up for 5 Michigan counties

LANSING — County clerks would like Michigan voters to know that unofficial election results are just that — unofficial and potentially subject to change.

Errors in the initial results the state posted from Kent, Kalamazoo, Leelanau, Calhoun and Allegan counties threw off totals by close to 50,000 votes.

That's less than 1% of the more than 5.5 million ballots cast statewide, but the updated unofficial numbers will likely change the anticipated outcome of a statewide race for the MSU Board of Trustees and potentially impact one state House race and at least one local race.

Clerks stress that in cases where initial posted results were incomplete, the actual results — and therefore the actual outcomes of races — never changed. The votes were in those cases correctly tabulated. Where mistakes happened, they say, is in how the initial results were reported, with some results from some precincts being initially omitted from what counties and/or the state posted online. Any such errors in unofficial numbers would have been caught in the canvassing of the results, which in many counties is still underway, but in fact were caught before the canvasses even began, clerks say.

Here are details on what happened in each of the five counties that had significant adjustments prior to the completion of canvassing:

Kent County

Initial unofficial results were underreported by 13,795 votes because absentee votes from six precincts in Ada Township and 10 precincts in Plainfield Township were not initially included in the unofficial results, said Kent County Clerk Lisa Posthumus Lyons.

In the case of Ada Township, the clerk transmitted all of the results but also transmitted test results on election night, Lyons said. A clerk's office employee at Kent County inadvertently selected the test results instead of the election night results for posting online, Lyons said.

In the case of Plainfield Township, an employee of the township clerk, through an oversight, failed to include absentee ballot results when election night results were sent for 10 precincts, Lyons said. The absentee results are sent by email via a private network and this would be like sending an email but failing to include all of the attachments, she said.

Paper records, which were later transmitted to the county, had the complete and more accurate unofficial numbers and the omissions were caught prior to the start of the county canvass, which is ongoing and expected to continue until Nov. 19, she said.

No races — statewide or local — were impacted by the upward revisions to the unofficial results, she said.

Lyons said she will recommend that in the future no test results be transmitted on election night and that election workers at both the township and county level take a little more time to make sure the results that get initially posted are as complete as possible.

Kalamazoo County

Initial unofficial results were underreported by close to 7,000 votes after results from the early voting site in Pavilion Township and absentee voting results from 10 precincts in the city of Portage were tabulated but not initially reported to the county, said Kalamazoo County Deputy Clerk John Curran.

Also, the county Board of Canvassers requested re-tabulation of some absentee ballot counts in various places around the county and results for Brady Township were also updated, Curran, who works for Clerk Meredith Place said in a Tuesday email.

Curran said the changes "are not anticipated to significantly change the outcome of state or local races," but did not respond to follow-up questions about whether any outcomes would be affected in any way.

Curran also did not respond to questions about the size of the adjustment to Brady Township numbers after the re-tabulation of absentee ballots there or why the ballots were not accurately tabulated and/or reported the first time. He also did not respond to questions about why complete unofficial results from Pavilion Township and the city of Portage were not initially transmitted to the county or what, if anything, the county was recommending to prevent a recurrence. Place could not be reached for comment.

Leelanau County

Initial unofficial results posted on the county website pointed to a 6-1 Democratic majority on the Leelanau County Board of Commissioners, but a significant number of early votes were not initially reported, the Leelanau Ticker reported. Once the unofficial results were updated, it appeared Republicans would have a 4-3 majority on the county board, the publication reported.

Leelanau County Clerk Michelle Crocker has not responded to phone calls and emails from the Free Press to discuss the initial error, which did not impact a competitive state House race involving incumbent Rep. Betsy Coffia, D-Traverse City.

Leelanau County was singled out nationally as one of the few counties in the U.S. where Vice President Kamala Harris significantly outperformed President Joe Biden in his 2020 matchup against Republican Donald Trump. It was not immediately clear to what extent that narrative is undermined by the votes that were not initially reported, which favored Trump and Republicans.

Calhoun County

Unofficial election results from Battle Creek initially excluded about 4,500 votes, the Free Press reported Friday.

The discovery of a programming error and subsequent updates to the vote totals made a competitive state legislative race much closer though Republicans are still on track to win that seat, based on unofficial results, and flip the Michigan House from Democratic control.

State Rep. Jim Haadsma, D-Battle Creek, who The Associated Press declared defeated by Republican challenger Steve Frisbie, based on the initial unofficial results, saw the gap between them reduced to 58 votes after the numbers were updated. Haadsma has retained an attorney and is considering requesting a recount, he said.

Angela Benander, a spokeswoman for the Michigan Secretary of State's Office, said a programming error caused about half the results to be excluded when city election workers attempted to combine results from two high-speed absentee ballot tabulators. All the results had been tabulated and the error was quickly corrected and the unofficial numbers updated once it was detected, she said.

Battle Creek clerk's officials referred questions to Calhoun County Clerk Kimberly Hinkley. She did not return phone calls but issued a statement Friday that said she is "confident in the integrity of our election process, despite this temporary issue, and ultimately we will be able to 100% certify the results within our county as required by law and expected by our voters."

Allegan County

The Allegan County case was different in that it affected the vote total for only one candidate. It is also different from the other instances in that the correct unofficial results were posted on the county website in the first instance, but incorrect unofficial results were posted on the state website, due to a data entry error by an employee of the county clerk.

The county employee omitted a zero when transmitting to the state the unofficial vote total for Rebecca Bahar-Cook, a Democratic candidate for the MSU Board of Trustees. Instead of 20,363 votes, as shown on the county website, Bahar-Cook was shown with only 2,363 votes on the state website, in unofficial results.

When the mistake was detected and corrected, Bahar-Cook moved into second place in the race to fill two seats, ahead of Republican Julie Maday, who had already declared victory.

As of late Tuesday, unofficial results showed Bahar-Cook ahead of Maday by more than 6,200 votes, but The AP had not yet declared a winner.

Benander said Tuesday that all the instances of inaccurate initial reporting of unofficial results essentially involved human error.

In 2020, inaccurate initial reporting of election results in conservative Antrim County drew huge attention because, until corrected, they showed President Joe Biden, the Democrat, running well ahead of Republican Donald Trump.

But Benander said many other instances of inaccurate reporting, which is far different from inaccurate tabulation, receive little or no attention.

"It’s not uncommon for counties to identify and correct similar reporting errors in their initial unofficial results," Benander said. "We typically see a few instances after every statewide election."

"We haven’t tracked the data over the years, but it wouldn’t be surprising if we have a couple more instances this year than in past elections," she said. "The introduction of early voting this year means there are more tabulated results to report, which makes it a little more challenging to get everything perfect on Election Night, along with the ongoing adaptation to the new processes by poll workers, clerks, and the Bureau of Elections."

She said the issues "underscore why the results reported on Election Night are unofficial and why we have canvasses to identify and correct any errors before the results are made official."

Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or [email protected].

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Initial election results were off for 5 Michigan counties. Here's why