While Florida is the election hot spot, voters in Michigan’s 8th Congressional District will be getting a little slice of recount action Monday.
Recounts will begin Monday for the contested U.S. House of Representatives seat, which was awarded to state Sen. Mike Rogers, R-Brighton.
Rogers beat state Sen. Dianne Byrum, D-Onandaga, by a margin of 160 votes.
Adam Wright, Byrum’s press secretary, said the campaign filed for a recount Monday after the Ingham County Boards of Canvassers certified the election results.
“With a margin of 160 out of almost 300,000 votes cast, Dianne feels she owes it to her supporters,” Wright said.
Wright said the secretary of state reports the recount process will take approximately two weeks - much shorter than the Florida presidential controversy.
The recount will continue in Ingham County through next Friday and start that day in Genessee County where it will continue until Dec. 12.
The votes will be recounted in Washtenaw County Dec. 11-13; in Shiawassee County Dec. 13-14; in Livingston County Dec. 14-18; and in Oakland County on Dec. 15.
Wright said Byrum wanted to file for a recount because Rogers won the election by such a close margin.
“A lot of the folks that we’ve talked to, they want Dianne to go ahead with the recount with a campaign this close,” he said. “For everyone who volunteered along the way, it’s really important for them to know the results are accurate.
“If we were to pick up one vote in every other precinct, it would be enough to turn it around.”
But Mark Grebner, a political analyst at Practical Political Consulting, said there is virtually no chance of Byrum picking up the extra votes she needs.
“The same results are going to be confirmed,” he said. “Michigan law requires that those hanging chads be picked off as the first part of the process. The ballots are clean when they run through the machines.
“Because of that, recounts always result in the same number within one or two.”
Sylvia Warner, Rogers’ press secretary, also believes there is little chance the election will be overturned.
“We’re very confident that the results will remain the same,” she said. “You may see the numbers go up or down slightly, but the outcome will still be that Mike Rogers is the Congressman-elect.”
She said the only reason Rogers filed a counterclaim for a recount is because he wanted the entire district recounted.
“We feel that if she’s going to be recounting certain precincts that you should recount the entire district,” Warner said. “That’s pretty much why we did it.”
It’s important to make sure the votes are accurate, though, said Jeanne Raven, president of the MSU College Democrats. Raven said she is going to try to get involved with the recounting process.
“It’s important, as we saw in Florida,” she said. “There’s a lot of votes that maybe the machine missed.
“In an election that’s so close, it’s important that we make sure that every vote was counted.”
