The Following has been adapted from three Facebook posts on May 7 and 8, following the big May-6 Special Election for the OAISD-Millage vote. They demonstrate 1. our discovery that WWMT CBS channel-3 News was reporting different results on the OAISD Millage election than Ottawa County was. 2. *It was still showing the OASID Millage as having failed as late 4:16 pm on May 7. We posted this discrepancy, tagging the news station on Facebook. Read farther to see what happened next:
Opinion 5-minute read
Published on Facebook, May 7, 3:40 pm, receiving 81 comments and 47 shares
It is interesting that Ottawa County Clerk / Register of Deeds, Wzzm 13 and Wood TV 8 are reporting radically different outcomes than News Channel 3 WWMT CBS for the OAISD Millage. In both cases, the “Yes” amount is the same. *What do you, the citizens think? At 4:10 pm on May 7, WWMT was still showing this outcome. Our representative called CBS to verify, yet was on hold forever. A message was finally left without a return call. https://wwmt.com/news/election-results
Please continue reading this story below? ⬇️
We followed up on Social Media the next day with this Update
Published Facebook, May 8, at 8:54 am, receiving 30 comments and thirty-three shares
Yesterday in the late afternoon News Channel 3 WWMT TV published an Editor's note with a retraction [see screenshots below to read retraction]. In spite of the fact that a media organization has admitted to faulty reporting, we are curious about where News Channel 3 received their incorrect information in the first place. Defenders of the vote's new outcome dismiss this as a clerical error. *Therefore, it is important to point out that election anomalies in Ottawa such as this one date back to the 2020 election.
Most recently, we find it strange that in August 2024, WZZM 13 had to issue a similar apology [as CBS did yesterday] for their published outcomes for Sheriff and Commissioner of District 9. In both instances, we received reports that the county website had gone down, explained by the County as an inability to sustain the web "traffic." Both candidates Jon Anderson and Roger Belknap went to bed believing they had decisively won, only to awaken early and newly find the totals had been changed. They and we were told it was a 'glitch." The pattern is not unlike the Presidential race of 2020.
—It was quite controversial in August of 2024 when WZZM 13 had to issue an apology for wrongly reporting Jon Anderson and Roger Belknap as the winners of all these local races. Therefore we are wondering where is the real media? Where is the investigative reporting about these issues, anomalies and what else they could mean instead of "glitches?" **It is a fact that our county has had issues of glitches for five years and we are wondering why the glitches NEVER fall the Conservative Republican's way? In each case, a glitch falls the way of the moderate/liberal. ***Now, this same thing has happened again with the ISD mileage. CBS reported it as having failed, but now, due to a "glitch" the outcome is reversed to falling the way of liberals who want big government.
--We will ALWAYS report glitches when we notice them, but no matter what excuses are 'put forward," it is impossible if one has a thinking brain to not see a pattern of what has happened with our local elections since 2020. --There is a race called between two candidates or the outcome of a proposal. The website goes offline at some point in the evening. Then results are then changed and suddenly a media organization has to issue an apology. **If it truly is just a glitch, why does it always fall one political way?
--Why is the media always the one apologizing and never the Ottawa County Clerk / Register of Deeds?(rhet.) *All of THESE questions are FAIR questions and these outcomes do not endear the Public's trust towards the media or the County. [**We look forward to an election glitch falling the way of the Conservative Republican in the future.] https://wwmt.com/.../may-special-election-results-calhoun...
We aren't sure why this keeps happening in election after election in Ottawa County, but one thing we know for sure: the State average for May Millages to go down in failure is usually about 18%....up until this year when on May 6, FIFTY PERCENT of them failed state-wide, including huge ones in Allendale, Midland and Otsego. All Millages in Ottawa County, (except for Allendale's) passed. Why is Ottawa so far outside the state average trend in this election? Do you think this means something?
It seems simple to us, that either WWMT is guilty of bad reporting for a long period of time, from late evening May 6 through 4:30 pm May 7 (leaving what they claim to be incorrect results sitting on their website until they were confronted the next day by us, the OCRP. Or... they changed the results to accommodate a preferred outcome once we notified them of the discrepancy. **You decide which you think it is. --Either way, it's not good.
