Sensing that Republicans might play politics with the certification, Representatives Debbie Dingell and Rashida Tlaib, two Democrats from metro Detroit, started making calls around 1:30 p.m., urging Democrats to join the Wayne County Board of Canvassers meeting to ensure that the election results would actually be certified. Requests to join the Zoom call quickly went beyond capacity, with 300 people on the digital meeting when it started around 4:45 p.m.
After the first 2-to-2 vote, all of those participants stayed and the board opened up the meeting to public comment. A broad coalition — Detroit voters, clergy members, Middle Eastern immigrants, Black women, environmentalists, civil rights leaders and people who had worked at the polls and the absentee voting center — spoke out on the deadlock, repeatedly calling the Republican members racist and saying they were trying to disenfranchise Detroit voters. ...
The video call went mute for about five minutes at roughly 9 p.m., after about three hours of angry commentary by people dialing into the meeting. When the board came back, its members informed the crowd that they had just voted unanimously to certify the results and ordered Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to conduct a thorough audit of the Wayne County results, especially the precincts with disparities. They didn’t explain how the reversal had come about. ...
The state board is supposed to certify its results on Nov. 23. But Christopher Thomas, an adviser to the Detroit city clerk, said that the state would have until mid-December to submit its tallies to the Electoral College, which he said was plenty of time, even if the state board deadlocks, which would most likely force the fight into the courts.
“When they deadlock, the court generally tells them, ‘Your job is ministerial,’ which means you count the votes,” he said, “and you publish the certified results.”
