Multiple Vote Tally Reporting Pathways Evident in Single Tabulator (MI)

Banks Township serves as a critical control case because its election results card loaded successfully and was unaffected by the ballot-definition mismatch occurring elsewhere in the county. Analysis reveals that the tabulator generated multiple, materially different representations of the same ballot set.
The central finding is a “subset output” error where one reporting layer reflected only 13 ballots (corresponding to a single ballot ID) despite the tabulator correctly scanning 1,129 ballots. This discrepancy provides a technical explanation for large-scale reporting variances observed in other Antrim County precincts that required manual reconstruction from tape-based outputs. In those precincts, Republican straight-party and candidate totals were significantly suppressed in initial unofficial reports before being corrected to align with paper ballot counts.