Battle Creek absentee ballots will be re-tabulated in key Michigan House race, attorney says

Rep. Jim Haadsma (D-Battle Creek) chair of the House Labor Committee. | Kyle Davidson

Absentee ballots in Battle Creek will be re-tabulated following an error in last week's election that has left results of a key state House race up in the air.

An error in Calhoun County's election reporting system from the Nov. 5 election resulted in approximately 2,800 absentee ballots within the city of Battle Creek being overridden and not counted.

The 44th state House race pitted incumbent state Rep. Jim Haadsma (D-Battle Creek) against Republican challenger Steve Frisbie, a longtime paramedic who has served as a Calhoun County commissioner for the past 13 years.

Haadsma's seat was one of four that was reported to be flipped by Republicans, giving them a 58-52 majority in the next session that begins in January.

Initial results in the election showed Haadsma lost by 1,381 votes to Frisbee.

After the error was discovered, the unofficial results were updated to diminish Frisbie's lead to just 58 votes — 20,823 total votes for him to 20,765 for Haadsma.

However, Haadsma's attorney, Chris Trebilcock, told the Michigan Advance late Sunday those results were "admittedly wrong."

"Until the Board of County Canvassers fulfills their duty to rerun the ballots from Battle Creek, correct the errors, count the overseas and provisional ballots, nothing is official," said Trebilcock. "Any updates you see from anyone other than the Board of Canvassers are nothing more than educated guesses. This race is not over."

Trebilcock now tells the Advance that late Tuesday, the Calhoun County Board of Commissioners voted to re-tabulate the absentee voter counting board (AVCB) for the City of Battle Creek starting Wednesday morning and continuing until complete, likely sometime Thursday.

The initial error was blamed on a pair of high speed tabulators which did not combine vote totals, and overrode a first report of ballots instead of adding to it.

In all, the Michigan Secretary of State's Office says Calhoun County had 7,416 absentee ballots.