Polling places for the August primary election saw about two million people cast ballots, with about 1.2 million (60%) voting absentee and more than 70,000 (3.5%) voted early, according to Bureau of Elections Director Jonathan Brater.
Brater gave the breakdown of the vote prior to the Board of State Canvassers certifying the vote Aug. 26. He said the Bureau expects a significant increase in the number of early voting and absentee ballots with both parties pushing those methods.
“What exactly that looks like, only time will tell,” he said.
He said there weren’t any major issues with the primary, but he said there were slower-than-usual unofficial results coming out of Wayne and Macomb counties because the counties were using an older version of a voting system. He said Wayne County had a network firewall issue that prevented electronic upload of some of the unofficial results.
He said, in all, the clerks did a good job of getting their unofficial votes up and being accurate about those results.
“Obviously, we all want them to be available as quickly as possible, but the priority is always going to be getting the results accurate,” he said.
He said the bureau would be working with the counties to see if they can help move the unofficial results along faster for the November election while still focusing on election integrity.
“We do want to work with the counties to make sure that we get the unofficial results out as quickly as possible,” Brater said.
State Board of Canvassers Chair Sue Ellen Gurewitz asked if the early processing of absentee ballots worked to help get the results out quicker and Brater said there were more jurisdictions taking advantage of the process, but ultimately they still had to wait until polls closed to finalize.
He said in Detroit and some other districts, people dropped their ballots off as polls closed and those needed to be checked against the qualified voter file and sent for tabulation.
“I think it did improve the efficiency of the process, but there’s always going to be waiting for the last round to come in on Election Day,” he said.
There were concerns coming out of Montmorency County and from Republican Articia Bomer, who was in attendance, about ballot rotation standards across the jurisdictions.
“We can’t just keep swimming forward when there’s sharks out there. You can’t certify this. This is not about ‘Stop the Steals.’ It’s not about that,” Bomer said.
She said she objected to the board certifying the results from Wayne County because of the ballot rotation and something she had filed with the courts, which the board and Brater said had nothing to do with them and would need to be resolved by the court.
Brater explained that ballot rotation is a practice that has been around for many years that moves the order of the candidates on the ballot to a different order in different jurisdictions.
“We’re not aware of any actual errors in the ballot rotation. I think it was an issue of voters just not understanding how the ballot rotation works,” Brater said.
Article courtesy MIRS News for SBAM’s Lansing Watchdog newsletter
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