—
LANSING – Before a single Michigan vote is counted, election workers will have already tested tabulators, secured ballots and locked down all equipment.
All under a system built to protect elections across the state.
Michigan splits the work: For example, counties program the tabulators, while cities and townships manage the front lines by staffing voting sites.
Lansing City Clerk Chris Swope says that division of responsibilities, along with pre-election testing, post-election audits and strict handling of ballots, keeps the counts accurate.
“That separation adds another set of eyes and makes our elections more secure here in Michigan,” said Swope.
The work for election integrity starts when candidates file.
In Midland County, John Keefer, the chief deputy clerk, said his office checks to make sure candidates are eligible. That includes verifying where they live and making sure they do not owe any overdue campaign finance reports.
Programmers then lay out the ballots and county officials proof them before they are printed.
Before any voting begins, every tabulator is tested in what clerks call a “test deck” to verify that tabulators are counting the votes properly, Swope said.
“We have already – before the election – proven that the tabulators count the ballots right,” Swope said.
Clerks need election workers to help run the polls.
Swope said Lansing employs several hundred election workers. State law requires them to be assigned by party and balanced as closely as possible between Republicans and Democrats.
The city is recruiting more Republicans this year to help balance its workforce, he said.
Finding any election workers is getting harder.
Dan Papineau, the vice president of strategic initiatives at the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, said about half the clerks that his organization talks to need more poll workers.
Papineau leads the foundation’s Support MI Clerks campaign, which focuses on recruiting across the state to fill the election worker gap.
“We’re seeing double-digit declines in poll workers, election after election,” Papineau said.
Longtime workers are aging out. At the same time, the increased popularity of early voting, which starts at least nine days before Election Day, means more days to staff.
Staffing also affects how voters see the process: A long wait could leave voters with concerns about the election, Papineau said.
More workers, he said, can ease those concerns and create “a much more trusting environment.”
Swope said new election workers are assigned training sessions, plus hands-on practice with the equipment. Workers may also use an electronic poll book, which provides training on handling different scenarios, including voters going to the wrong voting location.
Absentee ballots are the first form of voting and carry their own safeguards, Swope said.
Lansing has roughly 23,000 voters on its permanent mail ballot list, Swope said. Each is assigned a unique ballot number, which is checked once the ballot is returned to confirm the voter sent back the correct one.
Election workers also compare each ballot signature with the one on file.
“If it does not match, we reach out to the voter and they have the opportunity to cure their signature,” Swope said.
After absentee ballots are opened, workers remove the ballot number before taking the ballot out of its secrecy sleeve, Swope said.
“There’s never anybody who’s alone with an open ballot,” Swope said.
Michigan requires one drop box for every 15,000 registered voters. Swope said that means Lansing, which has 13 drop boxes, exceeds the minimum by six.
The drop boxes are locked and under video surveillance, as the city collects ballots daily.
Absentee ballots go through the same processes as mailed ballots: They are scanned, and signatures are verified, Swope said. Election workers then sort each ballot by precinct and check to make sure they have the right number for each precinct.
Keefer said the Midland County clerk’s office takes on a larger role than most other counties. It supplies every local clerk with identical materials, from the pieces of paper used on Election Day to the absentee ballots being sent out.
“We pack them, we seal all that stuff. And the clerks come to us and pick up all of their supplies so that they can go home and complete the [absentee ballot] process,” Keefer said.
On election night, Midland County’s election management system compiles the results without connecting to the internet.
“It’s never been connected to the Internet, and it never will be,” Keefer said.
To post unofficial results online, Keefer said he moves the management system’s data onto a flash drive that is wiped after every use.
That data produces reports for the county’s Board of Canvassers to analyze and compare with the physical results.
Swope said tabulators also require human verification, despite being checked prior to use. Physical results must still be printed out to be looked at by election workers.
“The number of voters has to match the number of ballots cast,” Swope said.
If they do not line up, clerks can track down the discrepancy.
In Lansing’s August primary election, a paper jam in a tabulator led to a ballot being counted twice, Swope said. After the election, the Ingham County Board of Canvassers reprocessed the entire precinct to ensure the tabulator’s vote count matched the number of voters.
Results are not finalized on election night, Keefer said, and election officials must wait six days for military ballots to arrive and to clear up any signature errors. If there are errors, clerks are required to send letters to voters so they can come in and sign their absentee ballots properly.
Midland County adds its own checks.
“We perform three hand-counts after every single election,” Keefer said.
Those counts occasionally differ slightly from the machine totals, he said.
For instance, a person may circle a candidate’s name instead of filling in the oval, which requires a real person to determine the voter’s intent.
After local officials complete their own checks, the process is still not finished.
Swope said that Ingham County audits the city’s records, including whether required notices were published, whether election workers completed training and whether absentee ballot applications are on file.
Counties may also conduct a risk-limiting audit.
Swope said a race is selected for the audit, and a calculation determines how many ballots must be reviewed to verify the count is accurate. Randomly selected precincts then hand-count the votes in that race, and the results are combined statewide to verify the accuracy of the vote.
“This audit re-proves that the tabulators counted right,” Swope said.
