In other words, the votes of nearly half of the 22,000 persons voting in Bay County in August were not counted.

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Accuracy Tests of Voting Machines Slated in Five Townships This Week

Freedom of Information Request Aims at Results of August Primary Election

October 24, 2010
By: Dave Rogers

A MyBayCity.com Freedom of Information (FOIA) request for results of the August Primary Election is still pending before County Clerk Cindy Luczak.

Ms. Luczak has not responded to the request in the legally mandated five days plus a 10-day extension sought by Bay County Corporation Counsel Martha Fitzhugh.

The FOIA seeks results of the invalidated ballots in the primary, amounting to more than 48.54 percent of all votes.

In other words, the votes of nearly half of the 22,000 persons voting in Bay County in August were not counted.

The exact total of invalidated (not counted) ballots was 10,735. Of that total, 8,484 were from election day while 2,251 were on absentee ballots.

The average number of spoiled ballots in Bay City precincts was 90, while in county precincts the average was 208. The difference is explained by the fact that city precincts are much smaller than those in the county.

By comparison, in Oakland County, 27 precincts with a total vote of 16,975, only 619 spoiled ballots were recorded, or 1.08 percent. In Wayne County, with 86,348 votes cast, only 6.18 percent were crossovers that had to be invalidated. The Wayne total of 5,386 corssovers was about half that of Bay County which had less than 20 percent of the total votes compared to Wayne.

MyBayCity.com, in the public interest, seeks answers to the reasons for invalidation of the votes, and what the results would have been had the ballots been valid.

Information is also sought on the method and efficacy of the orientation of election workers and the type of equipment and programming of voting machines.

Mrs. Luczak has told MyBayCity.com that the 300 election workers were thoroughly instructed to substitute ballots rejected by the voting machines because they had "crossover" votes, in other words votes cast for candidates from more than one party.

Voters were supposed to be asked to vote again and not split their tickets so that their votes could be counted. The "crossovers" affected only the partisan ballots, not the non-partisan and the issues. All of those votes were counted.

In primary elections in Michigan, voters are not allowed to split they votes between political parties.

Meanwhile, township clerks in Bangor, Merritt, Portsmouth, Hampton and Williams have scheduled Public Accuracy Tests of the county voting machines. Tests are slated as follows:

Portsmouth Township, Tuesday, Oct. 26, 8 a.m., conference room, 1711 W. Cass Avenue Road, Bay City, scheduled by Clerk Judy F. Bukowski;

Hampton Township, Tuesday, Oct. 26, 10 a.m., Hampton Administrative Offices, 801 W. Center Road, Essexville, scheduled by Clerk Pamela J. Wright;

Bangor Township, Tuesday, Oct. 26, 11 a.m., township administration building, 180 State Park Drive, scheduled by Clerk Janet Santos;

Williams Township, Tuesday, Oct. 26, 1:30 p.m., clerk's office, 1080 W. Midland Road, Auburn, scheduled by Clerk Amy Charney;

Merritt Township, Wednesday, Oct. 27, 9 a.m., township offices, 48 E. Munger Road, Munger, scheduled by Clerk Kathy Bremer. ###