Established Fact
The precinct serves as the foundational unit of American election administration. It is the primary level where reconciliation, chain of custody verification, and post-election audits occur. In Michigan, precinct-level reporting is not merely a convention but a constitutional and statutory mandate. However, a significant “structural gap” exists in the official records of the 2020 Detroit General Election due to the centralized processing of mail-in ballots. Detroit NEVER provided precinct-level vote tallies for the 2020 general election yet MCL 168.812 clearly requires the reporting of election results by precinct.
While election-day data is recorded by precinct, mail-in ballots were processed through 134 Absentee Voter Counting Boards (AVCBs), most of which served multiple precincts. Consequently, the official Statement of Votes (SOV) for these boards lacks a precinct-level breakdown for the majority of the vote. Resolving this discrepancy and achieving a complete precinct-level picture of the election requires the acquisition of Cast Vote Record (CVR) data—machine-generated logs that are currently unreleased.
Precinct-level data is the evidentiary basis for election certification. As the “atomic unit” of the system, it provides the necessary resolution to distinguish meaningful signals from statistical noise.
Critical Accountability Mechanisms
The following table outlines the mechanisms that depend on precinct-level data and the consequences of its absence:
Mechanism | Purpose | Failure Consequence without Precinct Data |
Ballot Reconciliation | Confirms voters signed in = ballots cast = votes counted. | Discrepancies cannot be localized or investigated. |
Chain of Custody | Links physical ballot containers to reported results. | Verification of ballot containers becomes impossible. |
Anomaly Detection | Identifies statistical outliers and geographic variations. | Irregularities are masked by data aggregation. |
Post-Election Audits | Compares hand counts to tabulated results. | Hand counts cannot be validated against a reported baseline. |
Recount Accuracy | Provides a baseline for precinct-by-precinct review. | No reference point exists to evaluate recount results. |
Public Transparency | Allows observers to verify individual precinct returns. | Review is reduced to examining unverifiable summary totals. |
Key Insight: Everything above the precinct level is a summary; the precinct itself is the record.
Citations
Official 2020 Election Results Per Precinct, https://electioncrimebureau.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/2020-Results-per-Precinct-Data-report.pdf
Detroit AVCB to Precinct Map Part 1, https://electioncrimebureau.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Detroit-AVCB-to-Precinct-Map-2.png
Detroit AVCB to Precinct Map Part 2, https://electioncrimebureau.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Detroit-AVCB-to-Precinct-Map.png
