Deadlocked board in key Michigan county fails to certify vote totals by deadline
By Kayla Ruble and Tom Hamburger
November 17, 2020 at 6:27 p.m. EST
DETROIT — In a party-line vote, the Wayne County Board of Canvassers failed on Tuesday to certify its ballot count, punting the question of who won the state's most densely populated region to a state regulatory board that meets Nov. 23.
The four-member board’s two Republicans voted against certification, while its two Democrats voted to certify the results. Joe Biden holds a lead of nearly 148,000 votes in Michigan, and Democrats in the state believe the partisan split of the board in Wayne County – home to heavily Democratic Detroit — simply delays an inevitable official victory for Biden in the state.
But in the short term, the standoff provides a public relations win to the Trump campaign and a group of Republican lawyers and activists who have questioned the legitimacy of the count in Detroit, which went overwhelmingly for Biden.
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The state board — also made up of two Republicans and two Democrats — has until Dec. 13 to reach a final decision certifying the winner of the election statewide.
Democrats expressed anxiety in recent weeks that Republican legislators will seek to use a quirk in state law to appoint their own electors.
“By indulging partisan conspiracy theories and debunked claims of fraud, legislative Republicans are eroding our citizens’ faith in our democratic institutions,” Christine Greig, the Michigan House Democratic leader, said in an interview Monday. “Stubborn refusal to acknowledge the election result flies in the face of the oath that each of us swore when we assumed our offices in the Michigan Legislature. It all needs to stop.”
Because electors must be chosen by Dec. 8 under federal law, some Trump supporters have argued that if there is no winner by that date, the legislature should try to name its own representatives to the electoral college.
At a rally outside state Capitol in Lansing on Saturday, pro-Trump activists urged the legislature to take control of the situation and select Michigan electors committed to the president.
“You’d better, and I mean better, send electors for Donald Trump,” organizer Kevin Skinner shouted. “We’re not going to take a stolen election.”
Whether the legislature could pick its own electors is the subject of an ongoing debate among legal experts of both parties.
Last week, Republican legislative leaders in Lansing issued carefully worded statements saying that the legislature should honor the will of the voters and not play a role in selecting electors.
Key GOP leaders also backed away from a call to audit the results before certifying.
“I don’t believe that enough votes are in question in Michigan to change the outcome, so I think we need to move forward” with county and state canvassing board certification, Michigan’s Republican former secretary of state, Ruth Johnson, told The Washington Post in an interview.
Johnson, now a member of the state Senate and chair of its Elections Committee, said she still thought an audit was necessary — but that it did not need to be conducted until after the votes were certified.
more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/michigan-vote-canvassing-board/2020/11/17/12141222-287c-11eb-8fa2-06e7cbb145c0_story.html