A recount confirmed that Lois Bahle, the Democrat candidate for the District no. 3 county commissioner seat in the Nov. 5 general elections, fell behind the Republican candidate, Will Bunek, by just six votes, with Bahle at 1,319 votes and Bunek at 1,325 votes.
Bahle successfully petitioned for a recount of the votes, which was carried out at the government center Nov. 26. After completing the recount, the board of canvassers confirmed that the numbers in the official results certified Nov. 16 were entirely accurate.
There were no changes across all precincts voting for District No. 3 commissioner, which includes Suttons Bay Township and a portion of Bingham Township, plus the absent voter counting boards and early voting at the government center from Oct. 26 to Nov. 3.
Immediately after the board of canvassers upheld the official results, Bunek said “finally.” Bunek and his supporters have been waiting in limbo since an error in the unofficial election results was discovered Nov. 8. And by the time those results were certified, they knew that Bahle planned to request a recount.
When the unofficial results were posted the morning after Election Day, Bahle was shown as defeating Bunek with 1,114 votes to Bunek’s 973 votes. But by the end of the week, the county’s board of can- vassers discovered that the ballots cast during the nine days of early voting were not counted properly.
This was because the election commission fed sample ballots into the tabulator used at the early in-person voting site to confi rm that it would process them accurately. While the test itself was successful, that sample data was not purged from a tabulator, so the sample data was included in automatically generated reports instead of the actual votes.
The board of canvassers corrected this mistake Nov. 8 by replacing the sample ballots with 3,156 actual votes recorded on receipt paper. Since so many votes were not included, this change affected the outcomes of three county commissioner races, the drain commissioner race, trustee races in two townships, and a Glen Lake School Board race.
Before filing her petition, Bahle said “owe(d) it to my constituents to request a recount,” given the circumstances and how close the District no. 3 commissioner race was. Under Michigan Compiled Law Act 168.862, any candidate may petition for a recount if they allege a good-faith belief that “but for fraud or mistake, (they) would have had a reasonable chance of winning the election.”
Ten election workers were compensated for about three and a half hours of work in recounting the ballots. The recounts in each precinct were observed by Bahle, Bunek, and some of their supporters in the lower level of the government center Tuesday.
Crocker said that the state considers the missed ballots to be based on human error. The official results are available at leelanau.gov/electionresults.asp.
