The certification of the final vote counts in Michigan hit an unexpected — and surprisingly temporary — delay Tuesday night:
The two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers cast an unprecedented vote Tuesday against certifying the county’s November election results for the county’s 43 jurisdictions, including Detroit, Michigan’s largest voting jurisdiction.
Monica Palmer, the Republican chair of the committee said, “I believe that we do not have complete and accurate information on those poll books,” referring to jurisdictions, including Detroit, that recorded unexplained discrepancies between the number of absentee ballots recorded as cast and the number of absentee ballots counted.
Jonathan Kinloch, the Democratic vice chair of the board, said: “Most of this is human error. . . . It’s not based on fraud.”
All four members of the board unanimously supported the certification of the August primary election, which also saw unexplained discrepancies.
President Trump saw their refusal as a victory, exclaiming on Twitter, “Wow! Michigan just refused to certify the election results! Having courage is a beautiful thing. The USA stands proud!” He later added, “Flip Michigan back to TRUMP. Detroit, not surprisingly, has tremendous problems!”
But later in the evening, the two Republicans on the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, reversed themselves, certifying the result and calling “on Michigan [Secretary of State] Jocelyn Benson to conduct an audit of the unexplained precincts in Wayne County that did not match.”
