This year, voting will be much easier for Michigan residents – thanks to new laws that establish early voting, automatically send absentee ballots to voters who requested them, and mandate that every community have at least one drop box for return these ballots.
But the changes meant that holding elections in this crucial presidential battleground much more difficult – leading some to worry about the burnout of the state’s more than 1,500 local employees, who have to juggle increasingly complex election responsibilities with other duties, ranging from maintaining municipal records to licensing pet animals. pet.
“We just put a Ferrari engine inside a Model T car,” Canton Township Clerk Michael Siegrist said of the sweeping effort to modernize elections in a state that still conducts votes under a decades-old hyperlocal system.
The fight to implement Michigan’s new voting rules also takes place in a highly tense climate, in which a simple accident can fuel new – and false – conspiracy theories about voter fraud.
In the 2020 general election, human error in the Republican stronghold of Antrim County in northern Michigan briefly led to unofficial results showing Joe Biden ahead when donald trump had conquered the county. Despite assurances from state and local election officials that there was no crime, the situation quickly escalated, with Trump’s allies trying to cast doubt on Biden’s victory, making meritless claims that tabulators changed the votes from Trump to Biden.
The state’s highly decentralized voting administration system means that “Michigan holds 1,500 elections on every major election day,” said Kyle Whitney, city clerk for Marquette in the state’s Upper Peninsula. This helps ensure that voting and vote counting are secure because it is impossible, he said, “to do something en masse that could influence elections on a large scale.”
“That being said, the downside is we have 1,500 local employees running for office and we are much more likely to have…stupid mistakes because the employees are poorly trained or tired,” Whitney said.
The changes also come at a time of increased turnover on the ground – as election workers leave their jobs because they have reached retirement age or face heavier workloads or can no longer tolerate the threats and abuse directed at them since the 2020 elections.
A recent national survey of election officials at the liberal-leaning Brennan Center for Justice found that 1 in 5 said it was unlikely remain in their positions until the 2026 midterm elections.
‘We are all beginners’
The new rules in Michigan stem from a constitutional amendment which state voters approved by a wide margin in 2022, which dramatically expanded voting access. For the first time, Michigan now requires nine days of early in-person voting.
The voter-approved amendment also allows Michiganders to sign up to automatically receive absentee ballots in all future elections. Each community must also have at least one secure voting machine, and larger communities must have one for every 15,000 people.
Additionally, the new rules give absentee voters until 5pm on the Friday after the election to correct any administrative errors on their ballots. Meanwhile, ballots cast by military and overseas voters must now be counted if received within six days of the election, as long as they are postmarked by Election Day.
The 2022 election amendment, known as Proposition 2, built on a constitutional amendment passed in 2018 that allowed any Michigander to request an absentee ballot without needing an excuse. The previous amendment also stated that residents could register to vote on election day.
The sweeping changes have led to a significant expansion of the workload for the array of appointed and elected city and county officials who oversee voting in the Wolverine State.
“It’s almost like having three separate elections now,” Lori Miller, secretary of Livonia in suburban Detroit, said of her new responsibilities. Miller was elected to succeed the previous term-limited secretary and is overseeing her first presidential election. Previously, she served as deputy city clerk.
Like other Michigan officials, Miller witnessed the drama surrounding the 2020 election. At one point, Republicans on the board responsible for approving that year’s results in Wayne County, which includes Detroit and Livonia, initially refused to certify Biden’s victory. They relented several hours later.
But Miller said he felt he owed it to the community where he lived his entire life to step up to the plate, despite the challenges. “It’s not a job you can learn in 30 days,” she said.
Deborah Pellow, a part-time employee from rural Tilden Township in the Upper Peninsula, is also overseeing her first presidential election this year. Pellow had a long career in public service, serving as county treasurer and supervisor, as well as a decade-long stint as county commissioner, among other roles.
But, she said, “this is the hardest and most time-consuming position of any position I have held in the last 30-plus years,” as she balances election demands with other responsibilities, which include accounting, communications and grant writing. for this community of just over 1,000 people.
Pellow earns $10,800 a year and said he is working double the hours he originally planned to fulfill his duties.
Even longtime employees say the learning curve has been steep.
Although voters approved the new rules in November 2022, the state Legislature needed to pass legislation to make them law. That was finalized in July 2023leaving just months for the state to implement the changes — including a suite of new software — before Michigan February 27 presidential primaries.
Siegrist, the clerk in Canton, said the time crunch was so intense that he learned the new electronic poll books needed for early voting just two hours before training poll workers on how to use them.
“I left 2022 feeling like an expert on election administration, processes and procedures,” said Siegrist, an elected Democrat who has served as city clerk since 2016.
“Now I’m a beginner and the difficult thing is that we’re all beginners,” he added.
The February primary was like “drinking from a fire hose,” according to Adam Wit, the clerk of Harrison Township — a community of about 23,000 people about 25 miles northeast of Detroit. Wit, a Republican, was first elected in 2012.
“There was new information, new policies, new procedures,” he said. “But failure doesn’t work, so officials just took the time, whether it was overtime on the weekend or long days,” to run the election.
Officials with Promote the Vote — the coalition of voting and civil rights groups and individuals behind Michigan’s 2018 and 2020 referendums — said state voters delivered a clear mandate that the election system must now deliver on.
“There’s no doubt that all of these pro-voter changes have created a lot of work for employees,” said Shira Roza, the group’s director of election protection. “We are very grateful to them.”
But, she added, “Michinderers have a fundamental right to vote. … It doesn’t make a lot of sense if you don’t have the opportunity to vote, and voting on Election Day doesn’t work for everyone.”
Employees ‘will do it’
State officials say they have been working hard to train and support employees, including providing $30 million in one-time grants to help them implement the new laws. A pilot program last fall gave some officials the opportunity to try out the new rules and technology before the primaries.
Angela Benander, spokeswoman for Michigan’s Democratic Secretary of State Joycelyn Benson, said the agency is also urging lawmakers to provide additional funding to help employees fulfill their responsibilities in the future.
Ann Arbor city clerk Jacqueline Beaudry, president of the Michigan Association of Municipal Clerks, said her group is also advocating that local governments increase wages and employees to help employees cope with the changes and compensate them appropriately for the additional work.
Benander and officials interviewed by CNN said February voting in the presidential primaries went well in the end. The next big test for Michigan will come in August, when voters cast ballots in primaries for state and local congressional offices.
“We are confident that the employees who are always so professional and dedicated to their work will be able to get the job done,” Benander said.
Pellow, the secretary at Tilden, agreed, saying her job is to help people vote “any way we can,” regardless of the trials.
“The people of the state of Michigan voted for it,” she said. “Whether it’s more work or not, we have to live with it. As I tell my workers, ‘Let’s put a smile on your face and thank people for voting, because that’s what we’re here for.’”
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