In Michigan, althoughthe prospect of the Board of State Canvassers failing to certify a presidential vote is new, the board being paralyzed by 2-2 partisan deadlocks is not.
The board has repeatedly split along partisan lines about certifying ballot proposals before the Michigan Court of Appeals has had to step in. Board members’ concerns about the quality of the signatures collected for certain petitions have consistently aligned with their partisan views about the proposals themselves.
In 2004, Democratic board members would not vote to certify a proposal defining marriage as a union of one man and one woman, or to place Ralph Nader on the ballot as an independent presidential candidate, where he would be more likely to draw votes from the Democratic nominee than the Republican one.
In 2001, Republican members refused to certify a question that would put Michigan’s concealed weapons law at risk, and, in 2002, the GOP board members forced a deadlock over a proposal to let voters decide whether to spend most of the state’s tobacco settlement money on health care and antismoking programs.
There have also been board of canvassers fights over election results, though not a presidential race.
In 2013, the Michigan Court of Appeals and the Board of State Canvassers both got involved in a dispute over how the Wayne County Board of Canvassers counted write-in ballots when Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan sought the office he now holds for the first time.
During the primary election, in which Duggan entered the race late as a write-in candidate but ultimately placed first, the Wayne County Board of Canvassers initially refused to count more than 20,000 write-in votes for Duggan because of a technical rule violation. Election workers had tallied up and recorded the ballot counts using numerical symbols, instead of the hashtags that were supposed to be used for write-in votes.
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