The Wayne County Clerk scheduled the a recount of the November 7 election for city clerk, as requested by one of the candidates, Garlin Gilchrist. The election will take place on December 5. I received the following email:
Email from Garlin:
The recount begins Tuesday, December 5, at 9 a.m., in Cobo Hall room 310B.
We need all hands on deck to be ready. Please join one of this weekend’s trainings:
Saturday at 1:30
Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church
2080 W. Grand Blvd. Detroit, MI 48208
Sunday at 3:30
West Side Campaign Office
19512 Livernois Detroit, MI 48221
Thank you. Let’s keep standing TALL for transparency together.
Garlin
Background
My Daily Kos story from last week about the recount: Detroit Recount! ... Waiting for county clerk to schedule the count. Many national groups supported Garlin’s campaign, including MoveOn, Democracy for America, and Our Revolution. They sent funds, and they sent volunteers who made phone calls and knocked on doors.
Why is this race important?
Voting problems in Detroit probably cost Democrats in Michigan the presidential election in 2016. The current Detroit City Clerk has a history of not being able to train her employees to handle routine issues. Polls open late, people with disabilities are not accommodated properly. Her trainings do not cover even basic things that every poll worker should know. For instance, in Michigan, a picture ID is not required, but poll workers regularly turn voters away from voting if the voters do not have a picture ID.
We need every vote in Detroit, and Garlin Gilchrist is committed to fixing those voting issues. There were problems with absentee ballots that confused absentee voters. Many absentee voters received multiple applications, some received multiple ballots, and a few received multiple postcards indicating that their vote was counted. Many questions arose regarding the accuracy of the vote count, considering actual votes based on predicted votes in the primary. Of about 100,000 votes, the difference in the city clerk’s race on Election Day was about 1400 votes.
FromFaceBook:
Tuesday, November 11: Today, our movement took the next step in the fight to bring trust, transparency, and accountability to the voting process in #Detroit by filing our recount petition with the Wayne County Clerk’s Elections Division. Thank you to every supporter of this movement who has volunteered thus far, and who had stepped up to help us raise the necessary funds to carry on.
We are requesting a recount of all 100 absentee vote counting boards plus an additional 60 precincts where we confirmed that voters had problems on Election Day.
We have retained one of Michigan’s foremost recount experts as our attorney and are eager to begin the process.
THIS IS NOT OVER. Stay tuned for opportunities to volunteer as a recount observer—we will need 100 volunteers to be ready. To get ahead of the game on that, sign up @ http://join.gilchristforcityclerk.com/volunteer [Facebook]
[Garlin Gilchrist II for Detroit City Clerk — FaceBook]
As I said last week: Thank you, everybody, for your pre-election and post-election support! Our Daily Kos-Garlin Gilchrist old ActBlue page shows we raised $780 for the campaign, and Garlin and the rest of the team and I are very thankful. We have a new ActBlue page for the recount process: The Detroit Voting Openness and Transparency Effort (VOTE) Fund.
Archive of previous Daily Kos stories for Garlin Gilchrist.
Garlin Gilchrist: Website, Facebook, Twitter.
Power with, not power over,
2thanks
Edited:
- Added the section “Why is this race important?”
- Added the date of the election being recounted, November 7.