Michigan’s primary election passed by last week with few bumps in the road.
But with the most decentralized election system in America, local clerks from both parties are calling for critical changes, and they want state lawmakers’ attention.
Election results are notoriously slow in Michigan, with the most finger-pointing directed toward mail-in ballot processing. State law doesn’t allow tabulation of absentee ballots – which numbered more than 1.1 million in last week’s election – until 7 a.m. on Election Day.
Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum told MLive that things ran smoothly in her jurisdiction on Aug. 2, but it could be smoother. She said there is room for lawmakers to add absentee (also called AV) ballot preprocessing, while also give more funding to train more election officials.
“It takes a while to process AV ballots,” said Byrum, a Democrat. “And the reason it takes so long is because election officials have procedures to maintain the safety and security of our elections – and some of those procedures take a while to complete.”
Michigan flirted with preprocessing back in 2020 when 3.3 million people – 60% of voters that year – chose to vote from home in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. At that time, the legislature allowed local clerks, though only for cities and townships with least 25,000 residents, to open the envelopes that absentee ballots came.
This preprocessing was only allowed for 10 hours the day before Election Day, however, meaning it was possible that bigger cities and townships could only make a dent in the overall AV ballots they received. Official tabulating still could not commence until polls opened.
That law expired at the end of 2020, so clerks currently have no ability to preprocess ballots. Meanwhile, 38 states allow some form of preprocessing, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Byrum said if the state truly wants to empower local clerks to get safe, accurate and fast election results, then preprocessing must also include feeding the ballot through the tabulator and keeping record of vote totals before polls open.
Oakland County Clerk Lisa Brown agreed, saying it is possible to both tabulate an absentee vote in a machine while preventing the result from being public before polls close.
Brown, a Democrat, told MLive her communities tallied almost 60,000 AV ballots on Aug. 2 with “no major hiccups.” Still, she feels preprocessing should be standard in Michigan.
“Every clerk should have the same tools in their toolbox,” Brown said. “It shouldn’t be based on some random population level. … There are so many other states that allow it, and they don’t have problems. It would be nice if we had those same options here.”
Preprocessing is also something Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat and Michigan’s top election official, has wanted from lawmakers for years.
“She will continue to advocate for this policy change in order to support clerks and get voters their election results on election night,” Department of State spokesperson Tracy Wimmer told MLive.
Livingston County Clerk Elizabeth Hundley, a Republican, said her county of just under 200,000 people doesn’t have speed issues with AV ballot processing like larger counties do. But Hundley did say she would be willing to testify to lawmakers about other improvements.
“We’re always in need of funding,” she told MLive, noting it is “very difficult” to train staff and election workers on Michigan’s complicated processes in “small windows of time.”
Hundley said more money should also go to educating voters, like spreading the word that you can only vote for one party’s races in a primary, for example. And she called for clearer guidance for candidates filing campaign finance paperwork, so regulations are enforced uniformly county to county.
“I think, as we saw with the number of people that were excluded ballot access due to campaign finance violations,” Hundley said of 11 candidates getting disqualified for the primary election, “that it is something for the legislature to consider.”
Republican Anthony Forlini – the clerk of Michigan’s third-largest county, Macomb – told The Detroit News he is willing to come to Lansing and testify about changes he wants to election administration.
Those changes include an early voting option that prevents tabulation machines from showing results before election day, a News reporter tweeted. Former Rochester Hills clerk Tina Barton, also a Republican, replied, “I agree 100%!”
Other clerks, however, are not eager to come to Lansing. In rural Antrim County – population 23,000 – Republican clerk Sheryl Guy said she doesn’t want to propose changes to lawmakers, as clerks in larger counties are “much more political than we are up north.”
“It’s just the hecticness of a normal election,” she told MLive, “and you live with it, and you pray that you survive it.”
Guy said if she does see a problem that needs fixing, she would tell the Michigan Association of County Clerks, which surveys clerks statewide and promotes changes.
“We keep our nose down and we do our job,” Guy said, “and we don’t really want to raise a red flag or to cry about it. We get it done.”
Byrum said that while she is willing to come and testify before the legislature, she seemed exhausted at the prospect: “Truth be told, it shouldn’t take a hearing.”
“We have been telling the legislature what we have been needing for years, and we shouldn’t have to attend a hearing,” she said, adding that clerks are already shoring up for the midterms. “This is a very busy time for us, and it is past time for the legislature to act.”
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