This year, voting will be much easier for Michigan residents – thanks to new laws that will allow early voting, automatically send absentee ballots to voters who request them and require every community to have at least one drop-off box in which to drop off ballots.
But the changes have made running elections in this crucial presidential battleground much more difficult — leading some to worry about burnout among the state’s more than 1,500 local clerks, who must juggle increasingly complex election responsibilities with other duties ranging from maintaining city records to licensing pets. .
“We just put a Ferrari engine in a Model T car,” Canton Township Clerk Michael Siegrist said of the sweeping efforts to modernize elections in a state that still conducts polls under a decades-old, hyperlocal system .
The fight to implement Michigan’s new voting rules also comes in a highly charged climate in which a simple mishap could fuel new — and false — conspiracy theories about election 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 as Donald Trump won the county. Despite assurances from state and local election officials that no foul play was involved, the situation quickly escalated, with Trump allies attempting to cast doubt on Biden’s victory by making baseless claims that vote counters were tipping Trump’s votes to Biden had switched.
The state’s highly decentralized voting system means that “Michigan has 1,500 elections every major Election Day,” said Kyle Whitney, town clerk of Marquette in the state’s Upper Peninsula. That helps ensure that voting and vote counting is secure, because it is impossible, he said, to “do one thing en masse that could influence the election on a large scale.”
“That said, the downside is that we have 1,500 local clerks administering elections, and we are much more likely to make stupid mistakes because clerks are undertrained or overtired,” Whitney said.
The changes also come at a time of increased turnover in the field – as election officials leave their jobs because they have either reached retirement age or face a heavier workload, or the threats and abuse that have occurred since the 2020 election directed against them can no longer be tolerated.
A recent national survey of election officials by the liberal-leaning Brennan Center for Justice found that 1 in 5 said they were unlikely to remain in office through the 2026 midterm elections.
‘We are all beginners’
The new rules in Michigan stem from a constitutional amendment that state voters approved by a wide margin in 2022 that dramatically expanded access to voting. 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 for all future elections. Each community must also have at least one secure ballot box, and larger communities must have one for every 15,000 people.
Additionally, the new rules give absentee voters until 5 p.m. on the Friday after the election to correct any clerical errors on their ballots. Ballots cast by military and overseas voters must now be counted if they are received within six days of the election, as long as they are postmarked by Election Day.
The 2022 voter amendment, known as Prop 2, built on a constitutional amendment passed in 2018 that allowed any Michigander to sign up to vote absentee without the need for an excuse. The previous amendment also provided that residents could register to vote on Election Day.
The broad changes have led to a significant expansion of the workload for the mix of appointed and elected city clerks who oversee voting in the Wolverine State.
“It’s almost like three separate elections now,” said Lori Miller, clerk of Livonia in suburban Detroit, of her new responsibilities. Miller was chosen to succeed the previous term-limited clerk and is overseeing her first presidential election. She was previously the municipality’s deputy clerk.
Like other Michigan officials, Miller witnessed the drama that engulfed the 2020 election. At one point, Republicans on the board responsible for signing off on that year’s results in Wayne County, which includes Detroit and Livonia, initially refused to certify Biden’s victory. A few hours later they relented.
But Miller said she felt she owed it to the community where she has lived all her life to take on the role, despite the challenges. “It’s not a job you can learn in 30 days,” she said.
Deborah Pellow, part-time clerk of rural Tilden Township in the Upper Peninsula, is also overseeing her first presidential election this year. Pellow has had a long career in the public sector, serving as city treasurer and supervisor, as well as a 10-year stint as a county commissioner, among other positions.
But, she said, “this is the most difficult and time-consuming of any position I have ever held in the last 30-plus years,” as she balances election demands with other responsibilities, including accounting, communications and grant writing. for this community of just over 1,000 people.
Pellow earns $10,800 a year and says she works double the hours she initially planned to perform her duties.
Even longtime clerks say the learning curve has been steep.
Although voters approved the new rules in November 2022, the state legislature had to pass legislation to make these rules law. That was completed in July 2023, giving the state just a few months to roll out the changes — including a suite of new software — before Michigan’s Feb. 27 presidential primary.
Siegrist, the clerk in Canton, said the time was so intense that he learned the new electronic poll books needed for early voting just two hours before he had to train poll workers on how to use them.
“I left 2022 feeling like an expert on election administration and process and procedure,” said Siegrist, an elected Democrat who has been the city manager since 2016.
“Now I’m a beginner, and the hard part is we’re all beginners,” he added.
The February primary was like “drinking from a firehose,” said Adam Wit, the clerk of Harrison Township — a community of about 23,000 people about 25 miles northeast of Detroit. White, a Republican, was first elected in 2012.
“There was new information, new policies, new procedures,” he said. “But failure doesn’t work, so the clerks just dedicated their time, whether it was extra hours on weekends or long days,” to administer the elections.
Officials with Promote the Vote — the coalition of voting and civil rights groups and individuals behind Michigan’s referendums in 2018 and 2020 — said voters in the state have issued a clear mandate that the election system must now meet.
“There’s no doubt that all of these pro-voter changes have created a lot of work for clerks,” said Shira Roza, the group’s director of election protection. “We are so grateful to them.”
But, she added, “Michiganders have a fundamental right to vote. … That doesn’t make much sense if you don’t have the opportunity to vote, and voting on Election Day doesn’t work for everyone.”
Servants ‘will get it done’
State officials say they have been working hard to train and support clerks, including with $30 million in one-time grants to help them implement the new laws. A pilot program last fall gave some clerks a chance to experiment with the new rules and technology ahead of the primaries.
Angela Benander, a spokeswoman for Democratic Michigan Secretary of State Joycelyn Benson, said the agency is also urging lawmakers to provide additional funding to help clerks carry out 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 salaries and staffing to help clerks navigate the changes and adequately compensate them for the extra work.
Benander and the clerks interviewed by CNN said February’s presidential primary elections ultimately went smoothly. The next big test for Michigan comes in August, when voters cast ballots for congressional, state and local offices.
“We are confident that the clerks, who are always so professional and dedicated to their work, will get it done,” Benander said.
Pellow, the clerk in Tilden, agreed, saying her job is to help people vote “any way they can,” regardless of the processes.
“The people of the state of Michigan voted for this,” she said. “Whether it is more work or not, we have to learn to live with that. As I tell my employees, “We’re going to put a smile on our faces and thank people for voting because that’s what we’re here to do.”
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