# Ballot Reconciliation **Ballot reconciliation** is the arithmetic check that closes a precinct. Add up the unused ballots, the ballots spoiled before delivery, the ballots spoiled and returned by voters, the affidavit or provisional ballots, and the ballots cast. Then compare that sum with the number of ballots originally delivered. The result goes on a **ballot reconciliation form** (for example N.Y. Elec. Law § 9-106). An unresolvable discrepancy "must be noted" (for example Minn. Stat. § 204C.28). It is the only stage in the custody chain where a number has to come out right, rather than merely be signed for. That makes it the chain's most informative control, and its weakest remedy. In the statutes surveyed for [[Election Ballot Chain of Custody Flow]], noting the discrepancy is the whole consequence. None gives a person outside the election office a way to compel an explanation. The canvass may catch it, but nothing requires anyone to look. ## Two balances, not one The [[Election Assistance Commission]]'s quick-start guide (2021) lays out the election-day checklist: 1. **Ballots against ballots.** Issued against cast, with spoiled, unused, provisional and emergency ballots each accounted for. 2. **Voters against ballots.** Poll-book check-ins matched against ballots cast. 3. **Paper against machine.** Memory-card and scanner totals matched against the paper count. **Precinct reconciliation** happens at the polling place on election night. **Central-count reconciliation** covers the piles a precinct never handles (mail, early and provisional ballots) and is done by batch at the county office. Most public fights involve the second kind, because the batches are large and are handled over several days. ## When the numbers do not balance - **Detroit, August 2020 primary.** Seventy-two percent of the city's absentee counting boards were out of balance: the poll-book counts did not match the ballots counted. Wayne County canvassers demanded answers. One said "the election results weren't incorrect." The mismatch was a clerical failure, not wrong votes. Three months later, imbalances were part of the argument when two Republican canvassers first voted against certifying the November result (see [[Election Canvass]]). - **Michigan's recount rule.** Under Michigan law a precinct that does not balance cannot be recounted without a valid explanation. In 2016 that made about **610 precincts, 392 of them in Detroit,** ineligible for the presidential recount. In one Rochester Hills precinct a single ballot was enough. So an imbalance does not void votes. It takes them out of the [[Recount]]. ## Reconciliation in election contests The most prominent attempt to turn reconciliation into a fraud case was [[Kari Lake]]'s 2022 suit over the Arizona governor's race. Lake alleged a chain-of-custody break at the county's mail-ballot contractor. She also pointed to a jump in early-ballot figures, from about 275,000 on election night to 298,000 on November 10, as "25,000 new ballots." On December 24, 2022 Judge Peter Thompson ruled against her: "The Court cannot accept speculation or conjecture in place of clear and convincing evidence." The pattern is general. A reconciliation report shows that a number moved. It does not say why, and the gap between the two is where contests are argued. ## See Also - [[Election Ballot Chain of Custody Flow]] · [[Chain of Custody]] - [[Election Canvass]] · [[How a Ballot Is Counted]] · [[Provisional Ballot]] - [[Post-Election Audit Crosswalk]] · [[Recount Trigger Crosswalk]] · [[Ballot Marking Validity Crosswalk]] - [[Election Denialism]]