If you think your vote doesn’t matter, consider what’s happening in Cass County’s Penn Township. State and county officials say the incumbent township treasurer beat his opponent by a single vote, thanks to some problematic wording in a law.
Cass County Clerk Monica McMichael says the problems started when state voter registration software gave incorrect information to poll workers in the Aug. 6 Republican Primary. A woman who lives in Penn Township showed up wanting to vote but the software said she needed to vote in nearby Calvin Township instead.
The woman had wanted to vote for 45-year-old Republican treasurer candidate Jodi Bucher, who was challenging 80-year-old incumbent Paul Rutherford. That initially gave both candidates 281 votes, so to break the tie, the county Board of Canvassers last week granted Bucher’s request to hold a special mail-in election.
But the state has determined the woman’s vote cannot count in the race and that Rutherford is the primary winner.
When voters are disenfranchised because of such mistakes, Michigan law can allow for special mail-in elections. But McMichael says the Michigan Bureau of Elections ruled that a special election can only happen if the number of voters who aren’t allowed to vote because of the mistake is greater than the difference in the number of votes received by both candidates. In this case, the two numbers were equal.
"When something like this can change the outcome of an election, it's devastating to have to tell a candidate that because of a mistake in the software, the law does not allow us to correct the mistake," McMichael said. "It's an unfortunate situation and the Bureau is adding this to their list of election bills that needs to be cleaned up so that something like this doesn't happen again."
