WELLS, Mich. (WZMQ) – On Thursday, the Delta County Clerk’s office performed an audit of one precinct’s May 7 recall election ballots.
According to Delta County Clerk Nancy Przewrocki, the state randomly selects precincts to be audited after each election. The Wells Township precinct was chosen for the Delta County District 5 race between new Commissioner Matt Jensen and Robert Petersen, who he unseated. Because Przewrocki will be on the November ballot, Election and Vital Records Deputy Clerk Kylee Hanson performed the audit.
The audit found that the number of ballots counted matched the number of ballots tabulated on Election Day. Auditors counted 184 votes for Petersen and 478 for Jensen. There were three ballots with write-in candidates, two overvoted ballots, and three ballots with no candidate selected.
Following two canvassers’ refusal to certify the election results, the Delta County Board of Canvassers voted in favor of certification on May 17. While Canvasser Bonnie Hakkola abstained from the final vote, she did sign the certification paperwork. However, she said she was “being coerced into signing” and called the integrity of the voting equipment into question. Hakkola did not join the other County Board of Canvassers members at the audit.
Przewrocki says she hopes the audit reduces concerns about voting machines.
“After every election, I’m always happy to do a recount or an audit because it verifies the accuracy of our equipment, of our election workers, and that we’re doing the process correctly,” she said. “In this case, it verified the accuracy of our voting equipment for those who had any questions.”
“There’s some doubt about the machine,” Hanson added. “Obviously, we’ve seen today that we hand-counted the ballots, the number was right on. There was only one race, so that was pretty easy, and we’re only required to count one race.”
Both Jensen and Petersen attended the audit.
“I didn’t know that this actually happened every election,” said Petersen. “I thought it was a learning process for me to figure out what was going on, to know how the process works. It came out how I expected it would; there was no doubt that we lost. Just means we have to work a little harder come August and November.”
Petersen says he has already filed to run in the August primary election.
