broken machines could throw Michigan recount into chaos
Preliminary investigation by election officials in Wayne County found that 610 of the area?s 1,680 precincts could not reconcile the number of votes cast according to the machines with the number of ballots issued according to the electoral rolls. Detroit contains 662 of Wayne?s precincts; in 392 of those, the number of votes didn?t match up.
Broken polling machines may have put vote counts in question in more than half of Detroit?s precincts and nearly one-third of surrounding Wayne County, possibly throwing the Michigan recount into chaos.
If the discrepancies can?t be solved by recounting every paper ballot in question by hand, a recount in those precincts simply won?t happen.
Donald Trump?s slim margin over Hillary Clinton means any chance that the state might flip on a recount likely hinges on Wayne County, where she won by a landslide. Clinton lost by 10,704 votes in Michigan; Wayne?s population of 1,759,335 makes it the likeliest candidate to contain errors bigger than that margin.