More Than Half Of Michigan’s Voters Are Done Voting

The November general election is tomorrow. But already, The Michigan Secretary of State's Office reports more than half the registered voters in Michigan have cast their ballots. They went with an absentee ballot and theirs are already returned by mail or hand-delivered. That’s 2.6 million ballots already in the hands of election clerks around the state.  They are waiting for about another 700,000.

Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson says anyone who hasn’t either completed or delivered an absentee ballot should not rely on the mail to get it to a local elections office on time. The only sure way is to hand-deliver it before the close of the polls tomorrow night at 8 pm. A public release from Benson's office is assuring Michigan voters their ballots will be properly counted, saying,“Michigan citizens are making their voices heard, confident that our elections will be an accurate reflection of the will of the people,” said Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. “Every valid absentee ballot will be counted by a pair of election workers – one from each major political party – trained to tally them without political bias.”

The Associated Press reports COVID-19 issues are thinning out the ranks of elections workers across the state. But there are no counties where elections clerks are indicating they’ll be unable to help voters at precincts or count the ballots once completed.

But in some cases, getting the ballots delivered to people who wanted them remains an issue.  Hundreds went missing in the past couple of weeks in Detroit. A federal judge has ordered the Detroit Postmaster to move his department into a full-court press to get ballots delivered and then returned for voters who requested them and never got them. The Detroit News reports the Postal Service is also ordered to sweep each building regularly for ballots that may have been misplaced or somehow lost.