Pre-processing absentee ballots means faster results. Why isn’t every Michigan clerk trying it?

Michigan clerks who took advantage of new laws that allow them to prepare absentee ballots for counting ahead of election day found during the August primary that they were able to get results out faster, but not without some hiccups.

Under expanded pre-processing laws in Michigan , election officials can take in returned absentee ballots, verify signatures, open the envelopes, ensure the correct ballot was returned, and scan them through the tabulator, but they can’t yet count the votes. In communities with more than 5,000 people, officials can begin doing this eight days before the election; in smaller towns, officials are allowed to do it the Monday before the election. Election workers don’t issue vote totals until polls close on election day.

Across the state, pre-processing meant that results came in faster after polls closed, Jonathan Brater, director of the state’s Bureau of Elections, told the state board of canvassers on Monday.

“It does speed the process up, and it makes election day a little easier to deal with, because hopefully you’ve gotten through the vast majority of your absentee ballots, and you’re just waiting for the last ones to come in,” Brater said.

Detroit, Grand Rapids, and Canton get a strong head start

For Detroit, it made all the difference, the city’s election director, Daniel Baxter, told Votebeat. The city used about five days of pre-processing, plus election day, and that allowed more than 80% of the absentee results to be reported by about 10:30 p.m., averting the worst of the long delays that can fuel concerns about wrongdoing in the elections, Baxter said.

“In 2020, when the numbers flipped from Trump to Biden, one of the issues people saw was there was a large dump of ballots cast in southeast Michigan,” Baxter said. That was because election workers could begin processing absentee ballots only on Election Day, and Detroit had more than 174,000 absentee ballots compared with only about 83,000 votes from Election Day.

With this year’s primary results, Baxter said, “we wanted to make sure the lion’s share were reported by the 11 o’clock news. We were successful in achieving that goal, and pre-processing helped tremendously.”

He expects that this fall, Detroit will be using all eight days allowed by state law.

In Howell, the largest city in Livingston County, officials tried out pre-processing for the first time during February’s presidential primary. They tried it for a single day and it worked well, Susie Jarson, deputy clerk and election coordinator, wrote in an email. The head start allowed inspectors to get through every absentee ballot they had up until that point and ease the pressure on the absentee ballot counting board on election day.

But during the August state primary, they weren’t able to do the same.

“We didn’t have a complete board of inspectors that were available that day,” Jarson said. “Inspectors of two different party affiliations (are) required, and that day we only had a small group available that was all part of the same party.”

Jarson said officials hope to be able to return to pre-processing in November, given the expectation there will be significantly more ballots than in August’s relatively low-turnout primary , but they’re waiting to see if they can pull it off.

In Canton Township, Clerk Michael Siegrist said pre-processing allowed teams there to finish counting absentee ballots before election day votes were counted. In Grand Rapids, several days of pre-processing helped the city get caught up by Sunday, meaning that on election day, workers had to handle only a few days’ ballots, said Robert Macomber, chief deputy clerk for Kent County.

It also helps that municipalities are given more days — and more freedom — to process ballots than they once were. When the law allowing for pre-processing was first signed into law in 2022, clerks in the state’s largest communities were given just the Sunday and Monday before the election to start processing, and they were limited in what they could do. Officials could only open the envelopes and verify signatures, but they couldn’t feed ballots into the tabulator yet. At the time, many clerks felt it simply wasn’t enough time to do the less time-intensive part of the job.

But with additional days and flexibility added into law in 2023, the option has helped to expedite results in places that choose to use it.

“Overall, yes, a benefit, and I think you’ll see the local clerks fine tuning the number of days needed for the General as they watch the absentee return rates in real time,” Macomber wrote in an email.

Flint didn’t use pre-processing, and results took a while

Some jurisdictions have not yet given pre-processing a go. In Flint, for instance, officials did not pre-process ballots during the primary, and results didn’t come in until the next morning, which bothered members of the City Council. During a council meeting earlier this month, members said it was “ridiculous that it takes so long.”

“For us to be the last one in the county to put out results, it just adds fuel to the flame for conspiracy theories and everything else,” council member Dennis Pfeiffer said, suggesting that maybe the city needed someone else working elections.

Davina Donahue, the Flint clerk, responded that the city had more than 5,000 absentee ballots, which slowed things down, in addition to having the most precincts among all the municipalities in Genesee County. Donahue did not respond to requests for comment from Votebeat.

MLive reported that Genesee County Clerk Domonique Clemons has encouraged Flint to pre-process ballots but that the city chose not to start processing until the day of the election.

In less populated parts of the state, clerks report that they largely aren’t using pre-processing because it simply isn’t necessary. In Dickinson County in the Upper Peninsula, County Clerk Carol Bronzyk said that none of the towns in her jurisdiction were doing it because they weren’t populous enough to need it. The largest town in Dickinson is Iron Mountain, which has about 7,500 people.

“Maybe someone would consider it in the future, but I just don’t think our communities are big enough or have enough votes to do it right now,” Bronzyk said.

In areas with more people, being able to get results out quickly means that results come in sooner. That will make a difference not just in the August primary, but also in November when all eyes are on Michigan as a swing state.

The expansion of pre-processing rules was a long time coming, Detroit’s Baxter said. He first started working in elections in 1985 and started handling absentee ballots in 1998.

“I’ve been looking to take advantage of something like that since then,” he said.

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