County Commission flips back to Republicans after election-night vote miscount
From staff reports
UPDATE, Nov. 8: Republicans will once again have a majority on the Leelanau County Board of Commissioners (BOC), 4 seats to 3, following official canvassing by the County Clerk’s Office today, which revealed that hundreds of early votes were accidentally not counted during election night, Nov. 5.
Unofficial results posted early on Wednesday morning, Nov. 6, erroneously showed that 6 of 7 Democrats had won their races. The Glen Arbor Sun, as well as other news outlets including the Leelanau Enterprise, the Leelanau Ticker, and the Traverse City Record-Eagle, all reported on Wednesday that the Democrats would enjoy a super majority on the BOC. Instead, they’ll once again be in the minority.
According to County Clerk Michelle Crocker, the votes posted on the County website on Wednesday morning did not represent all the ballots cast. They were uploaded but didn’t save correctly, she told the Glen Arbor Sun. A hand count of the paper backup ballots on Friday revealed the discrepancy. The County Clerk’s Office works with the company ElectionSource.
“The County Board of Canvassers are still canvassing results, and the UNOFFICIAL results have been updated with the results from the Early Voting Site,” Crocker wrote in an email. “During this important canvassing process today, it came to our attention that the results from the Early Voting Site were not reflected in the UNOFFICIAL result counts from Tuesday evening. The results did not save to the reports posted to the unofficial results website. As part of canvassing all results are verified against tabulated paper back-up.
“New reports have been generated, and the UNOFFICIAL results have been updated and are on the County website. Remember until certified, all results are UNOFFICIAL. This shows the importance of the Canvassing process.”
The vote count corrections flipped District 2 to Republican Mark Walter, who beat Democrat Scott Perry, 1,217 votes to 1,069. Unofficial results Wednesday morning showed Perry ahead by 11 votes.
The correction also flipped District 3 to Republican Will Bunek, who beat Democrat Lois Bahle, 1,325 votes to 1,318. Unofficial results Wednesday morning showed Bahle ahead by 141 votes.
And the correction flipped District 5 to Republican Alan Campbell, who beat Democrat Kama Ross, 1,320 votes to 1,275. Unofficial results Wednesday morning showed Ross ahead by 60 votes.
The other four Commission races were not affected and stand as reported on Wednesday.
In District 1, former Commissioner Democrat Rick Robbins beat Republican Tim McCalley, 1,285 to 1,111 votes.
In District 4, incumbent Democrat Ty Wessell bested Republican Jim White, 1,454 to 810.
In District 6, incumbent Democrat Gwenne Allgaier beat Mark Roberts, 1,562-1,152.
In District 7, Republican Steve Yoder beat Democrat Tim Dowd, 1,365-877. Yoder had upset longtime Republican incumbent Melinda Lautner in the primary election.
Leelanau voters supported Democrats for statewide and federal office, even as the party woefully underperformed on the national level, with Vice President Kamala Harris losing to Donald Trump in key swing states and losing her bid for The White House. Leelanau voters preferred Harris to Trump, 9,396 to 8,032, even as she lost to him by 80,000 votes statewide.
In the U.S. Senate race, Leelanau voters also favored Democrat Elissa Slotkin to Republican Mike Rogers, 9,156 to 8,100 in a race that Slotkin narrowly won. In the Congressional race, they voted for Democratic challenger Callie Barr over incumbent Republican Jack Bergman, 9,029 to 8,163 in a race that Bergman won easily. And in the State House race, Leelanau voters favored incumbent Democrat Betsy Coffia over Republican Lisa Trombley, 9,101 to 8,378. Coffia won reelection.
