GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A current Ottawa County commissioner, who unofficial results say lost his bid for re-election earlier this month, is requesting a recount, according to a filing with the county clerk.
"We anticipate having, holding this recount on Thursday, so we have the entire day Thursday blocked off for the recount," County Clerk Justin Roebuck said.
According to the recount filing, 9th District Commissioner Roger Belknap's request on Aug. 19 was based in two factors.
One was what Belknap, according to the filing, described as "complications and outages of online reporting." The county clerk has now outlined the technical difficulties that caused the results site to become unavailable for a brief period on election night.
"When our website, our election results website, went down, we literally, within the span of one hour, had 30,000 unique visitors to the site, and over 129,000 refreshes to the site," Roebuck said. "And so, that was just a significant impact to the server at the county here."
This, Roebuck stressed, did not impact the vote totals.
"That's the server of Ottawa County," Roebuck explained. "It's not connected to the County Clerk's election results database, and so no election results were ever affected by that outage. But our website did not display election results for about 20 minutes, at which point we updated the website with the election results we had that were basically a PDF format. And so, we continued updating the results on the website in a PDF format consistently as we were receiving additional results until, just before 11 p.m., the website, as it normally is, was back up and functioning on the county's IT server."
According to the filing, the second factor Belknap outlined was what he attested were screenshots of results reported in local media.
13 ON YOUR SIDE acknowledged that results in the race were initially inverted on its website, inaccurately reporting the numbers and giving the impression that unofficial results portrayed Belknap to be the victor, when this was not the case.
"We know that voters come to us for minute-by-minute election results, and we strive for 100% accuracy," 13 ON YOUR SIDE News Director Brooks Blanton said in a statement. "Due to human error, on the morning of August 7, candidate vote totals were transposed on the WZZM website. As soon as the mistake was realized, correct vote totals were updated."
"People are people, and sometimes people make mistakes," Roebuck said. "And that is why it is so critical that we have the system of checks and balances that we do. So, even though a mistake is made, even though a website goes down, even though a mistake is made at a media outlet reporting website or reporting election results information, there are checks and balances in our system to guarantee that those mistakes do not affect outcomes."
As part of his discussion with 13 ON YOUR SIDE on Monday, Roebuck outlined what some of those checks and balances are.
"At any critical juncture in an election, there is bipartisan involvement," Roebuck said. "So, at the precinct level, we have Republicans and Democrats in every single precinct signing off on the final totals that print out on election night in your voting location, in your precinct. And then, the results from the tabulators are kept in an encrypted flash drive. So, it's a device that's, you know, just a flash drive that gets sealed into a container - again, Republicans and Democrats signing off on that. That gets put into a secure container, delivered to our office, and then we are checking the seal numbers on that as well."
"So, we have teams of folks here at our office making sure that those seal numbers are accurate and that nothing was tampered with prior to us actually inserting that information into our results reporting database," he continued. "And our database is never connected to the internet. So, it's a secure results reporting database that we can then generate a file, a totals file, and then we can take that information and send it over to the web."
With the recount set for Thursday, Roebuck said he's ready, no matter the result, to get this straightened out.
"We're excited to be able to show the public that, and to be able to open that process up for people," Roebuck said. "Not just the candidates, but for people as members of the public who can come in and watch for observers who are sitting at that table - for them to have a better understanding of the checks and balances in the process and that the outcome is accurate and that they can trust that outcome."
But for those who may seek to use the circumstances to intentionally foment distrust, the clerk had a message.
"We are doing the work of democracy," Roebuck said. "We are ensuring that every vote counts and for every citizen to cast a ballot and know and feel confident that their voice was heard and that our elections do reflect the will of the people. So, we won't allow those who sow distrust and misinformation intentionally to dissuade us from our mission of ensuring that every vote counts."