ALAIEDON TOWNSHIP, Mich. — A voting tabulator at the Alaiedon Township polling place quit reading ballots for a short stretch on Election Day, leaving roughly 10 to 12 ballots to be counted by hand after the polls closed.
Voters who arrived while the machine was down were directed to drop their marked ballots into a sealed box behind the tabulator. State procedure calls for those ballots to sit in an auxiliary bin until 8 p.m., when election inspectors from both the Democratic and Republican parties count them together.
Ingham County sent a repair worker to the township, and scanning resumed once the machine was fixed. What caused the breakdown was not immediately known.
Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum called it an isolated problem and said tabulator jams turn up at a polling place or two in almost every election. Township Clerk Kimberly Hafley said turnout ran well above a typical midterm, with a steady line of voters through the day.
Elsewhere in Michigan, the Secretary of State’s office reported two cases in Dearborn and Flint where federal election monitors from the Department of Justice went beyond their role by asking about poll worker training.
Section: More Lansing MI politics news
Filed under: Lansing MI Politics News
