WEST OLIVE, MI (WHTC AM/FM) – Officials in Ottawa and Kent counties says election results data posted on several local media sites didn’t come from them.
In a joint statement, Kent County Clerk Lisa Posthumus Lyons and Ottawa County Clerk Justin Roebuck said their teams received calls and messages Monday morning concerning election results data that has been posted on local media sites. The statement said, “We want to be very clear that results posted on these sites were not provided by official election administrators, nor were our offices involved in any way.”
Lyons and Roebuck say prior to every election their websites are stress tested to ensure that data can accurately be reported. They said it was their understanding that the media organizations inadvertently made their testing “live”.
The statement from the clerks also said, “Proper protocols should be in place and followed to do this testing in a “non-live” environment. Misinformation from any source, whether intentional or unintentional, can damage public confidence in our elections. Therefore, we encourage these media outlets to issue a public explanation to their audiences so that the public has the facts and the situation may be immediately cleared up.”
Comments