Wayne County, Michigan reverses course, certifies election results for Biden

Republican members of a county election board on Tuesday reversed their decision to block the certification of Detroit election results.

The two members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers voted to certify the results after an outcry from state officials and Detroit voters.

About three hours earlier, the board deadlocked in a 2-2 votes along party lines that blocked certification and kicked the contested Nov. 3 election to state officials.

The failure to certify the results was hailed as a victory for President Trump, who is mounting federal court challenges to the ballot counts in Michigan and several other states to reverse Democrat Joseph R. Biden’s projected win of the White House.

The Republican board members had said absentee ballot poll books in heavily-Democratic Detroit were discovered to be out of balance. The failure to certify would have triggered a state takeover of the canvassing process.

Detroit voters, however, protested and accused Republicans of trying to steal the election.

Before the second vote that succeeded in certifying the results, Wayne County Board of Canvassers Vice Chairman Jonathan Kinloch, a Democrat, called the two Republican members “reckless and irresponsible,” according to the Detroit News.

Chairwoman Monica Palmer, a Republican, said the poll books didn’t add up.

“Based on what I saw and went through in poll books in this canvass, I believe that we do not have complete and accurate information in those poll books,” she said.

Absentee ballot poll books also were out of balance in the August primary election and the 2016 general election, which were certified without disputes, according to the newspaper.

Mr. Trump’s federal lawsuit in the state claims mail-in ballots were tallied out of view of poll watchers and ballot-scanning machines are suspected of switching votes to presumed President-elect Joseph R. Biden.

Mr. Trump trailed Mr. Biden by about 148,000 votes in unofficial results.