Oakland County prepared to hand count ballots

State and federal officials have not responded to concerns about malfunctioning ballot tabulators in suburban Detroit, reported more than a week ago by Oakland County Clerk Ruth Johnson.

Johnson’s concerns about the machine used to count votes in Oakland — Michigan’s second most populous county — came to light yesterday afternoon when the federal Election Assistance Commission published an Oct. 24 letter from Johnson in which she said that the ES&S M100 vote tabulation machines used throughout the county had failed pre-election logic and accuracy tests in four Oakland county communities.

The machines came up with different totals each time the same set of ballots were run through, she said.

Speaking to Michigan Messenger in Pontiac this morning, Ruth Johnson’s spokeswoman Tracy Ward refused to comment on which Oakland communities were affected by the machine problems but said that the county has a “concrete” plan to conduct hand counts if necessary.

Some city clerks in Oakland County expressed anger with Johnson for writing to the EAC. They say that any problems clerks experienced during test runs of the machines were due to human error and that Johnson’s letter could reduce confidence in the election.

“Some of these clerks didn’t know what they were doing,” Farmington Hills Clerk Kathy Dornan said.

Dornan said she has total confidence that the machines in Troy are accurate.

The Secretary of State’s Office did not return a call for comment.

Troy City Clerk Tonni Bartholemew told Michigan Messenger that she shared her concerns about Johnson’s letter with Chris Thomas, the state elections director, and was told only that the letter was “unfortunate.”

For its part, the Election Assistance Commission told Michigan Messenger that it has “no jurisdiction over the management of Michigan’s voting systems.” The Election Assistance Commission was created by the 2002 federal Help America Vote Act to serve as a clearinghouse for election-related information. It also certifies voting systems.

“The EAC has jurisdiction only over the systems certified through the federal program,” EAC spokeswoman Jeannie Layson said. “Participation by the states in the federal program is voluntary.”

Earlier this year a spokesperson for the secretary of state told Michigan Messenger that although secretaries of state in Ohio and California had issued advisories about problems with the ES&S M100 machines, Michigan had opted out of participating in the EAC vote machine certification program.

ES&S, the machine manufacturer, has reportedly said that the malfunctions in Oakland County are caused by a build-up of dust on machine sensors.

The ES&S machines were purchased by the state, but the contract did not include maintenance. This was left to each individual township, Sue Desteiguer, Kent County director of elections, told Michigan Messenger.

“I am aware of Oakland’s problem and it happened in other counties as well, including Eaton,” Mary Hollindrake, Kent County register of deeds, told Michigan Messenger.

One clerk explained that there are settings for how sensitive the machine is. If the setting is too high, it might pick up any speck of dust or any pen mark inside an oval and consider it a vote. If it’s set too low, it won’t pick up valid marks.

Hollindrake said she believes the problem with the machines is that they were calibrated to be too sensitive. “It was not a problem with the programming of the election or the programming of the ballots,” she said. “It was a problem with the calibration on the machines.”

She also said, “Michigan is the most decentralized election state in the country. I would never have let the maintenance lapse that long, even if I had to pay extra to get ES&S out there.”

In her letter to the EAC, Oakland County Clerk Johnson expressed concern that running a record number of ballots through remaining machines in Oakland County could lead to a build-up of dust and increase the likelihood of inaccurate vote counts.

This is a concern shared by Jan BenDor of the Michigan Election Reform Alliance, a group that has election monitors stationed in eight counties.

“If the precincts don’t have a can of compressed air to clear the scanner paper path,“ she told Michigan Messenger, “there are going to be problems.”

Michigan Messenger’s Ed Brayton and Todd A. Heywood contributed to this report.