LANSING, Mich. (WZMQ) – Over 2 million Michigan voters have already cast their vote in this presidential election. 670,000 voters cast absentee ballots that were turned in before early voting had begun.
For the first time in a presidential election, local clerks will be allowed to preprocess absentee ballots for up to 8 days before Election Day.
Under the old laws, clerks couldn’t start processing absentee ballots until 7 a.m. on Election Day. Workers were sequestered until polls closed at 8 p.m., unable to leave the building or make phone calls. Chris Swope, Lansing’s City Clerk, said in 2020, volunteers showed up at 6 a.m. and didn’t finish the count until 10 a.m. the next day.
“Election workers as well as challengers were sequestered until 8:00 p.m. election night. You come in at six or seven [in the morning] and you can’t leave, you can’t take a walk around the block, you can’t talk to your loved ones and communicate what’s going on.” Swope said. “When they were sequestered, they couldn’t really report anything to anybody, so it really does make it a more open process for both the people working it as well as the people who are watching the people running the election.”
Under the new law, officials were able to start processing ballots on Monday. Poll workers take in returned absentee ballots, verify signatures, open the envelopes, ensure the correct ballot was returned, and scan them through the tabulator, but can’t count the votes until polls close on Election Day.
Swope said that preprocessing has helped relieve the extra stress of a 28-hour day on poll workers, many of retirement age.
Some clerks have still decided to opt out of preprocessing in this election. The City of Warren was a part of national controversy in a past election. City officials were accused of election fraud concerning the way the vote counts were updated because of preprocessing.
Warren City Clerk released this statement on the subject:
“I have been administering elections for 24 years and my staff has always demonstrated accuracy and precision with elections. accuracy is the number one priority for me, and then speed is second. It is for these reasons that I have chosen not to preprocess.
First, it actually would take more time to pre-process absentee votes for eight days given the extra people needed, the time it takes, the storage necessitated, and the compiling afterward, than one full day of counting.
Next, pre-processing is not mandated for clerks. the legislature could have easily mandated pre-processing, but they chose to make it optional.
Finally, up to eight days of pre-processing opens the door for results to get leaked or compromised. I will not risk compromising the integrity of the election.
I also want the results quickly and we are committed to accomplishing that task in addition to keeping the election accurate, safe and secure. We can do this!
I hope that the scrutiny this office is getting will not discourage the general public from voting. As always, thank you for voting.”
-Sonja Djurovic Buffa, Warren City Clerk
The final counts from the election are expected to take up to a week to be certified. The same new election laws allow military and overseas voters a week for their ballots to be returned to michigan, so long as they are postmarked by Election Day.
Absentee vote counts tend to be added in chunks throughout the evening, which has caused some confusion in the past, but Swope stressed security measures are protecting the open process with oversight from both Republican and Democrat election inspectors. Ensuring all votes are counted correctly and no information is compromised before totals are released the night of November 5.
