Wayne County Assistant Corporate Counsel Janet Anderson-Davis (left), Wayne County Assistant Elections Director Jennifer Redmond (third from left) and Wayne County Elections Director Delphine G. Oden (right) sort through ballots July 5 during the court-ordered Taylor School Board election recount.
Miller shows more write-in votes than Meyers
By SUE SUCHYTA
Sunday Times Newspapers
TAYLOR – A court-ordered recount of the Taylor School Board election determined that of the two write-in candidates running for the fourth seat, Ronald Miller had more votes that David Meyers.
Meyers was declared the winner and sworn in after the November election. Miller expressed concern when his own precinct – at which he and his wife voted – showed no write-in votes.
Wayne County Board of Canvassers Chairwoman Krista Haroutunian said the recount ordered by Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Robert Columbo found Miller received 444 write-in votes, while Meyers, who was seated and has been serving on the school board, received 398 votes.
She said the next step is not as straight-forward as it might appear.
“It’s still on litigation, so we have to go back to the judge,” Haroutunian said. “It’s an out-of-the-ordinary situation.”
She said the timeline is up to the judge.
“The paperwork has to be submitted to the court, then if there are any other parties or their lawyers that want to bring additional motions to the judge, then that will happen,” Haroutunian said. “If they do, there could be additional hearings. If they don’t, then the judge may rule. You don’t know until things happen.”
She said whether Meyers’ school board votes would be considered invalid was outside her purview.
“We had a very long meeting, the staff did tabulating, and then the final results were read, and then we certified,” Haroutunian said, referring to the staff’s July 11 outcome.
She said that while part of their meeting was spent voting on acceptable name variations on the write-in ballots, she does not know if that is what changed the vote count. She said they were not privy to how many votes were associated with each different allowed name variation.
“The staff ends up associating what has been voted on to the actual numbers,” Haroutunian said.
(Sue Suchyta can be reached at [email protected].)