Read on Twitter
1/ There& #39;s been lots of speculation about why Antrim County, MI initially reported incorrect results on Wed. The results have since been corrected, but people are naturally wondering what happened. Here& #39;s the likely technical explanation and my assessment.
2/ First, see @MichSOS& #39;s new statement about the issue:
https://www.michigan.gov/documents/sos/Antrim_Fact_Check_707197_7.pdf
It">https://www.michigan.gov/documents... was human error, isn& #39;t a sign of anything malicious, and couldn& #39;t impact the official results in any way. But what exactly happened?
https://www.michigan.gov/documents/sos/Antrim_Fact_Check_707197_7.pdf
It">https://www.michigan.gov/documents... was human error, isn& #39;t a sign of anything malicious, and couldn& #39;t impact the official results in any way. But what exactly happened?
3/ The problem relates to the "election definition"--configuration files that describe the races and candidates on the ballots across the county.
In October, Antrim noticed an error in its election definition: two local races had been omitted in certain precincts.
In October, Antrim noticed an error in its election definition: two local races had been omitted in certain precincts.
4/ They fixed this by recreating the election definition and installing the corrected version on the scanners for affected precincts. However, precincts where the ballot wasn& #39;t impacted by the change continued to use the original election definition.
5/ Because of this, each individual scanner tabulated ballots correctly, but there was a problem when it came time to combine the results from across precincts.
6/ Antrim uses @dominionvoting ballot scanners, which store vote totals on memory cards. Think of the data on the card like spreadsheet, with a number for each choice. But there aren& #39;t any labels--it& #39;s the election definition that says which row corresponds to which candidate.
7/ When Antrim loaded the memory cards into its reporting system, the system interpreted them using the revised election definition. The numbers from scanners that used the old definition didn& #39;t line up with the right candidates, so the initial combined totals were very wrong.
8/ Fortunately, the individual scanners counted correctly. Each scanner prints its results on a paper "poll tape" at the end of election night, so Antrim re-entered the data from those printouts to get the correct overall totals.
9/ Even if Antrim hadn& #39;t caught this problem so quickly, it would have been found and corrected during normal post-election procedures. Every Michigan jurisdiction checks the poll tapes against the reported totals before certifying results.
10/ When the dust settles, we can investigate further and learn from these events. Defensive software engineering should help prevent such reporting glitches even if operators make a mistake. Still, Antrim responded well, and MI& #39;s failsafes worked as designed to ensure integrity.
