The County Press

Eighteen Lapeer County precincts reported vote counting machine disruptionFree Access



LAPEER — Primary Election Day in Lapeer County has less than two hours before the polls close at 8 p.m.

In the county, there were disruptions earlier today at 18 of the county’s 38 voting precincts. Shortly after the polls opened at 7 a.m. Lapeer County Clerk Theresa Spencer began to receive phone calls to report that vote counting machines were rejecting many ballots. Spencer said it was determined that a timing mark printed on the back of some ballots was defective, which caused the counting machines to reject them. It’s unclear at this time how many ballots were impacted by the time mark issue.

The rejected ballots were placed into a locked auxiliary bin when they were cast. New ballots were printed and delivered to voting precincts that had issues with their counting machines.

Election inspectors from the Republican and Democrat parties will duplicate those ballots onto new ballots with correct timing marks after the polls close at 8 p.m. and process them in vote counting machines. “It’s unfortunate this happened today on Election Day, but we’ve taken steps to ensure all the ballots will be counted,” said Spencer.

Editor’s note: Tuesday’s election results will be posted to The County Press website when unofficial results are tabulated and posted by the Lapeer County Clerk’s Office. Additional reporting will be published in the Sunday, Aug. 7 edition of the newspaper.