How Michigan’s election safeguards prevent double voting

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Four voters allegedly voted twice in the primary elections in Macomb County, officials say, a matter that local police are now investigating.

The fact that the problems were promptly flagged should reassure Michigan voters rather than worry them, officials say. It’s a sign that the state’s systems are secure enough to stop or at least catch when votes are cast twice, and further evidence that widespread fraud is unlikely in the state.

In Michigan, voting twice is a felony, and documented instances of voters casting more than one ballot are exceedingly rare. A 2022 audit by the state auditor general found that of the more than 11.7 million votes cast in the state over several elections, 99.99% were not duplicates.

That’s due in no small part to the safeguards in place across the election process to prevent voters from casting more than one ballot, or to catch them if they do. It’s part of what makes Michigan’s elections secure, officials say.

In most cases, voters who try to cast two ballots are stopped at their polling place when e-pollbooks — the computers used to check voters in — flag that a voter has already returned an absentee ballot. If the e-pollbook shows that a voter was issued an absentee ballot but hadn’t yet returned it, poll workers arrange to void the absentee ballot before allowing the voter to cast a ballot in person.

When double votes do happen, it’s usually a matter of timing — an in-person vote gets cast before a clerk has the opportunity to mark an absentee ballot as returned. If a voter casts a ballot in person before their absentee ballot is processed, the inspector processing the absentee ballot would be notified of the potential double vote.

That’s what happened during the primary election, Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini said, but a poll worker overrode the system to allow the second ballots through.

“It’s part of the reason we’re being so public about it,” Forlini told Votebeat, pledging that workers would not be doing anything like that in November.

St. Clair Shores Clerk Abby Barrett said her team found the four instances of double voting in two ways: They caught them on reports printed out from the qualified voter file as well as the paper trail showing the alleged double voters had signed an absentee ballot envelope and an in-person application form at a polling place.

“We brought it to the County Prosecutor and Bureau of Elections’ attention immediately,” Barrett wrote in an email.

In his four years as Macomb County Clerk, Forlini said that this was the first instance of potential double voting that he knew of. He said it was important to him that the county was very public with any potential problems, though, because he wanted to be transparent about what the election process actually looked like to quell any rumors or conspiracy theories.

“I don’t want to not expose any problems we may have,” Forlini said. “I want to look at it right away, see it for what it is and deal with it.”

Macomb County is considered a swing county that regularly attracts national attention during presidential elections as an indicator of political trends. But Forlini, a Republican, said his focus was more on making clear the county had “a good, clean election.”

Mistakes can happen, he said, because even the best election clerks are only human. He said he believed the local clerks in Macomb County were fundamentally good people looking to do good work, exemplified by Barrett’s quick reporting of the problems in her city.

“In Michigan, we’re very decentralized in our elections, which makes us one of the best in the country because you can’t really do wholesale, large-scale fraud here,” he said. “There are a lot of parties involved in each election.

“That’s not to say there won’t be problems,” he said, “but it’s fair to say that if you have good people, you’re going to have a good election.”

There were 13,146 votes cast in St. Clair Shores’ August primary. The city has about 57,500 people.

In a statement last week, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said she was grateful for Forlini’s help “in ensuring that voter fraud is rare and that when it happens, we catch it and prosecute it to the fullest extent of the law.”

Macomb County followed the security protocols in place, Benson continued, and she referred the matter to the attorney general’s office for additional investigation.

Benson’s office said that the state does not keep tabs on how often double voting is attempted but said officials knew it was rare. Angela Benander, spokesperson for Secretary Jocelyn Benson, said that law enforcement would investigate voters and the election workers to figure out how the voters were issued two ballots in the first place.

Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office told Votebeat that it’s monitoring the allegations and staying in contact with the Department of State, but that the case is being investigated locally.

It’s not clear if the alleged double votes were intended to be fraudulent or just a mistake. The St. Clair Shores police department is investigating the incidents, Police Chief Jason Allen said, but no additional information was available.

Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org .