Board of Canvassers certifies Michigan’s election results

[caddieman]

By Zahra Ahmad | zahmad@mlive.com

The Board of State Canvassers certified Michigan’s November general election results in a 3-0-1 vote Monday.

The board, made up of two Republicans and two Democrats, met Nov. 23 to make the vote count official after all 83 Michigan counties certified their election results, which include Joe Biden’s 2.8% statewide victory over President Donald Trump. The state certification of the more than 5.5 million ballots cast comes after Trump and his attorneys and supporters persistently called for delaying certification. Board of State Canvasser Norman Shinkle abstained from the vote.

Aaron Van Langevelde, a Republican canvasser and an attorney for the House Republican Caucus, said the board doesn’t have many options outside of performing its duty to certify the election.

 

“This board must respect authority entrusted to it and follow the law as it is written. We must not attempt to exercise power we do not have,” Van Langevelde said. “We have a clear legal duty to certify the results of the election. We cannot and should not go beyond that.”

 

Christopher Thomas, a former Michigan Elections Director who came out of retirement to help oversee Detroit’s election process, took questions from the board and said the canvassers don’t have the authority to conduct or order investigations or audits of the count before certification.

 

Shinkle, a Republican canvasser, inquired whether the board could adjourn without taking a vote.

 

“I believe Wayne County’s certification needs to be looked at. I believe there were serious problems with it,” Shinkle said.

 

Thomas said the board may adjourn and wait for corrections to returns, but members must have a reason to do so, and with all Michigan counties having certified their results, he argued there would be no legal basis for declining to immediately certify.

 

“You can’t vote ‘no’. There is no ‘no’ in these circumstances... You’re the endgame of the statewide elections for 2020,” Thomas said.

Certifying the election is historically a routine sign-off by the board, but after members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers last week initially voted against certification, and then were contacted by the president after ultimately voting to certify their results, speculation arose over the possibility that the state board might decline certification.

 

Trump last week also hosted the state’s most influential GOP lawmakers, House Speaker Lee Chatfield, R-Levering, and Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, R-Clark Lake, at the White House.

 

Chatfield and Shirkey both said Trump didn’t ask lawmakers to “break the law” or “interfere” with the election.

Laura Cox, the Michigan Republican Party Chair, asked the board to delay certifying the votes.

 

“There are too many questions, too many numeric anomalies. We need to remove the distrust and sense of procedural disenfranchisement,” Cox said.

 

Trump and members of the Republican National Committee have filed several lawsuits asking the courts to intervene in Michigan’s election by stopping the certification of results until an audit has been conducted. Michigan law doesn’t allow audits to be performed until election results are certified.

 

Charles Spies, who represents Senate candidate John James, said the meeting should be adjourned until Wayne County’s results are audited.

Our position isn’t that this election shouldn’t be certified, but the Board of State Canvassers should only do that when it is confident that the results it is certifying are correct,” Spies said.

 

Van Langevelde, who was an assistant prosecutor for Branch County, said he’s spent a lot of time reviewing the state’s elections and it doesn’t give the board authority to conduct an audit.

 

“I think the law is on my side here, we have no authority to request an audit or delay or block the certification,” Van Langevelde said.

 

Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson has said an audit will be conducted after certification of results to explore problems with unbalanced precinct records that appeared in Wayne County and elsewhere in the state, indicating some errors by poll workers, but not in numbers that would impact the outcome of the election. A jammed tabulator or a person signing in to vote and leaving before casting their ballot can result in imbalance.

We have seen positive indications of Detroit’s accuracy and accountability,” Thomas said. “Detroit’s voters were given the opportunity to vote safely and I’m pleased with what’s occurred.“

 

City of Detroit Clerk Janice Winfrey said using electronic poll books and having election workers process ballots in shifts resulted in fewer mistakes. The city managed to reduce its percentage of imbalanced precincts compared to the August primary, 75%, to 70% in the November general election. Winfrey responded to Shinkle’s inquiry about why there weren’t more Republicans working in Detroit, stating people may have waited too long to apply and go through training.

 

“We do all of this so we can eliminate as much human error as possible, but as humans, we all make mistakes,” Winfrey said.

 

https://www.mlive.com/public-interest/2020/11/board-of-canvassers-certifies-michigans-election-results-in-3-1-vote.html

 

[nstoolman1]

Bunch of liars and crooks. 

Would not trust any of them.

[coorslite21]

Given the questions involved in the validity of the Michigan vote count.....even with this "certification" there are still legal options......let it play out....    CL

[coorslite21]

Contesting the outcome

 

Even after the election results have been certified, losing candidates can still contest the election outcome in court. To ensure a speedy resolution, some states have deadlines for initiating and concluding contests, according to NCSL.

 

In Arizona and Georgia, for example, losing candidates have up to five days after the results have been certified to mount a contest, while in Nevada they have five days after a recount, according to NCSL.

 

The ‘Safe Harbor’ deadline

 

This is the deadline for states to resolve any election disputes and to designate their presidential electors.

 

This year the deadline falls on Dec. 8, six days before the critical Electoral College meeting.

 

After this day, states can’t change their laws for the purpose of choosing electors, said Kimberly Wehle, a law professor at the University of Baltimore and author of What You Need to Know About Voting – and Why.

 

“That is the deadline whereby a state can meet to decide to swing the electors to Trump on the theory that there is no legitimate count,” Wehle said. “In a state with a Democratic governor, the question would be whether a Republican legislature could do it without the governor signing it into law."

Zach Smith, a legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, added that a candidate could still get a majority of the Electoral College votes and win the presidency even if a state didn't certify its results.

 

"If a state didn't certify and it caused the candidate to fall below a majority of Electoral College votes, obviously, that's a much more serious situation," Smith said.

 

The electors meet

 

While the popular vote for president was held Nov. 3, the more important electoral vote takes place Dec. 14. That is when the 538 electors meet in their state capitals to cast their ballots for the president-elect. To get elected, a candidate needs at least 270 votes. Biden has clinched 306 votes to Trump’s 232.

 

Presidential electors pledge to vote for the winner of the popular vote in their state and in some states are punished if they don’t comply. Since the founding of the American republic, there have been 156 such “faithless electors.”

 

Joint session of Congress

 

On Jan. 6, both houses of Congress meet to tally and certify the electoral votes.

This is the final step in the process. Fourteen days later, the new president is inaugurated, assuming power at noon on Jan. 20.

 

CL