Roger Belknap was defeated in Michigan’s August 6, 2024, GOP primary for a position as Ottawa County commissioner. His opponent got 4,070 votes, and he got 2,997 votes (see results here, under “Ottawa County Commissioner 9th District REP”).
Belknap says, “My petition for recount is based upon two factors. Reported results indicating my campaign received more votes than my opponent have been sent to me [screenshots] with all precincts being reported in local media.” He also complained about slow loading of results to the county clerk’s website.
Ottawa County is part of the Grand Rapids metro area. On election night, a Grand Rapids TV station accidentally inverted the Commissioner District 9 results, so the TV station showed Belknap winning until “it was corrected the next day” (see story here).
That’s not grounds for a recount of a race he lost by more than 15 percentage points. Nor is it election fraud. The election office tally, not the TV report, is the official result. No election laws were violated, nor were anyone’s rights compromised, by the TV station’s erroneous reporting. The same goes for the county clerk’s slow reporting of results, which apparently was due to “high traffic” on the website.
I’m posting this story for what it illustrates. Sore losers and election deniers often try to dispute election results by indirect means. Their “evidence” may consist of exit polls, news reports, mathematical models, and other second-hand sources, along with people claiming to have witnessed illegal voting or malfeasance by election workers. It’s not unknown for election challengers to attempt to offer this kind of evidence to courts deciding election cases.
Elections are decided by votes, not TV news reports. There’s a legal process you go through to get a recount of a close election result, have fraudulent or ineligible ballots removed from the tally, and/or correct counting errors. Nothing done outside of that legal process is official or has any effect on the election result. Everything else is armchair second-guessing. This case provides an extreme example of absurd second-guessing.
It doesn’t matter whether you have confidence in the election laws, the election process, or election results. Let me be clear about this: You’re not entitled to that. Your feelings don’t override the system established by law for conducting elections. If you don’t like an election result, your recourse is limited to the remedies provided by the election laws. Complain all you like; but ballots, not flimsy arguments, decide our elections.
Sayonara, Mr. Belknap.