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State officials gear up for Michigan recount effort

Green Party candidate Jill Stein has hired ex-Democratic Party chair Mark Brewer to run her recount effort in Michigan







Chad Livengood, Detroit News Lansing Bureau Published 9:55 a.m. ET Nov. 28, 2016 | Updated 10:47 p.m. ET Nov. 28, 2016 Attorney Mark Brewer discusses Green Party candidate Jill Stein's plan to seek a recount of the presidential election in Michigan. Michigan Republican Party Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel and state elections director Chris Thomas respond. Chad Livengood, The Detroit News 
Former Michigan Democratic Party chairman Mark Brewer has been hired by Green Party candidate Jill Stein for the recount.(Photo: Dale G. Young / The Detroit News)Buy Photo


Lansing â Michigan election officials braced Monday for a statewide presidential hand recount as advocates called it essential to ensuring the integrity of voting systems and critics blasted it as an unnecessary and nearly impossible task to finish quickly.

The Board of State Canvassers on Monday certified Republican President-elect Donald Trumpâs 10,704-vote victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton in Michigan, starting a 48-hour clock for Green Party candidate Jill Stein to request a recount of 4.8 million votes.

Stein is planning to petition for a recount by Wednesdayâs deadline, said her new attorney, Mark Brewer, a former chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party.

State Elections Director Chris Thomas said he wants to commence the recount as soon as Friday because a Dec. 13 federal deadline looms for final certification of Michiganâs votes. How a Michigan election recount will work

âThe expectations that have been outlined to have this done by Dec. 13 are impossible or incredibly unlikely to be successful,â said John Pirich, a Lansing-based election law attorney representing Trump.

Brewer said Stein is seeking to ensure all votes were counted and that the stateâs ballot-tabulating machines arenât susceptible to human manipulation.

âThe purposes of this manual recount are to ensure the accuracy and integrity of the election,â he told the Board of State Canvassers. âEvery vote must be counted.â

Libertarian Gary Johnson finished with 172,136 votes or 3.6 percent of the vote, while Stein received 51,463 votes or 1.1 percent.

Michigan Republican Party Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel ripped Stein for pursuing the recount and called on Clinton to renounce it.

âMichigan voters are being disenfranchised, and this recount should not happen,â McDaniel said. â... Hillary Clinton should call off the recount. She should ask Jill Stein to abide by the results that were certified today.â

Clintonâs campaign attorney has said they will participate in recounts Stein is initiating in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Thomas said his office plans to start the recount Friday and Saturday in the stateâs 19 largest counties.

â... We are prepared to move forward at this time if we receive any type of recount petition by Wednesday afternoon of this week,â he said.

Thomas said county canvassing boards will need to work all weekend and all next week to meet the Dec. 13 deadline. The presidential electors meet Dec. 19 to cast official votes for Trumpâs Electoral College victory, and federal law requires a âsafe harborâ period between the meeting and the certification of election results in each state, he said.

The four-member state elections board passed a resolution authorizing Thomasâ department to conduct the recount, should it be requested. 
Democratic party canvasser Julie Matuzak expresses her trust in the stateâs election system as members of the Michigan Board of Canvassers meet Monday to certify the presidential election and to hear arguments against conducting a recount. (Photo: Photos by Dale G. Young / The Detroit News)

âOddâ to seek recount

Thomas said itâs âodd to say the leastâ that Stein would seek a recount given that she finished fourth in Michigan. But as a losing candidate, she has the right to seek a recount.

Under the recount law, Stein will have to pay $790,000 for a statewide recount at a cost of $125 for each of Michiganâs 6,300 precincts.

Thomas said he estimates the recountâs cost will exceed $900,000, the rest of which will be borne by individual counties.

âWeâre going to file the required fee to do this, but if you think about it, democracy is priceless,â said Brewer, who ran the state Democratic Party from 1995 to 2013. âThe integrity of our elections is priceless. And if one vote is not counted properly, that should be taken care of and fixed â and thatâs what this process is all about in the end.â

Under state law, Trump would have seven days to file an objection in writing with the board, which would then hold a public hearing and halt the recount, said Fred Woodhams, spokesman for the Secretary of Stateâs Office.

âThat is an avenue, and the state board would determine the objection,â Woodhams said.

But the four-member panel composed of two Republicans and two Democrats is known to deadlock on deeply partisan issues. If the board were to tie on whether to end the recount, the process of recounting votes by hand would continue two business days later, Thomas said.

Thomas said any delays in court or at the board level could make it difficult to finish the recount by Dec. 13.

âIf weâre not done by the 13th, I think the recount is off by that point,â Thomas told reporters.

Lawyers hired

Trump hired Lansing election law attorneys Gary Gordon and Pirich to represent him in Steinâs recount. Both predicted the recount could not be pulled off in less than two weeks.

A 2005 recount of the Detroit mayoral election between Kwame Kilpatrick and Freman Hendrix took a month, Gordon noted. Other Detroit mayoral recounts involving Dave Bing and Mike Duggan each took about three weeks, said Pirich, who was involved in both.

âThe reality is itâs a herculean effort that has to be put into this, and I think the timetable is not achievable,â Pirich said.

Gordon called for the recount to be done by voting tabulation machines.

Julie Matuzak, a Democratic member of Board of State Canvassers, cited Trumpâs pre-victory rhetoric about the election being rigged as a reason to conduct the recount.

âI donât think thereâs any choice but to hand count these ballots,â Matuzak said.

She argued that a statewide hand recount would ârestore confidence in our electoral system.â

âI donât think weâre going to find anything wrong,â Matuzak said.

Since more than 80,000 voters participated in the Nov. 8 election without recording a vote for president, Brewer told the canvassers the only way to ensure there wasnât really a presidential vote by each of them is to hand count them.

âThis is about the integrity of the vote, no matter where it is,â Brewer told reporters. âA vote in the Upper Peninsula is just as important as a vote in southeast Michigan.â

Brewer said Steinâs recount petition will include exhibits from computer science experts on how Michiganâs voting records could be compromised.

Blank votes spur request

In a series of tweets over the weekend, Trump called the Green Partyâs recount effort a âscamâ effort to make money by asking for âimpossible recounts.â

Trump spokesman Jason Miller referred Monday to the recount as ânonsense,â noting that Clinton conceded to Trump and chastising reporters for âchasing the shiny object.â

âI really do think itâs ridiculous that so much oxygen has been given to the recount effort when thereâs absolutely no chance of any election results changing. This electionâs been decided,â Miller told reporters on a call.

Stein has suggested Michigan had a âsky-high number of blank votes,â which is why she plans to pursue a recount of the Nov. 8 results.

Approximately 84,290 ballots were cast in the election without votes in the presidential contest.

Rick Lass, director of recounts for Jill Steinâs campaign, said the recount would show whether any of those ballots contain faintly marked ballots that were missed by Michiganâs optical-scanning machines.

âMichigan does not have an audit of the machines, so a hand recount of all of the paper ballots is the only way to make sure the machines are counting properly,â Lass told The Detroit News.

Lass said the Stein campaign wonât accept a less onerous recount of the vote using the tabulating machines.

âThatâs the whole reason we have paper ballots,â he said.

Wisconsin officials have already greenlighted a recount and the Stein campaign is trying to jump-start a recount in Pennsylvania, which has a complicated voter-initiated recount law.

As of Monday afternoon, Stein had raised $6.32 million toward a $7 million goal to fund the three-state recount efforts, according to her campaign website.


Staff Writer Melissa Nann Burke contributed

How 3 states compare

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein wants recounts in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Here are the margins of victory by Republican President-elect Donald Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton:

â Michigan: 10,704 votes

â Wisconsin: 22,177 votes

â Pennsylvania: 70,779 votes

Sources: Michigan and Pennsylvania secretary of stateâs offices; Associated Press

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