Live election updates- Polls now closed in Michigan; officials report 'strong turnout'
(FOX 2) - With polls now closed, results should begin coming up, though you most likely won't know the winners of big races for another 24 hours.
Absentee ballots are expected to delay results. Keep up with all the updates from Election Day below.
The polls may close at 8, but it could take a day before results are announced
Election day is underway in Michigan as a midterm race that will prove consequential for the future of the state begins. However, due to the high number of absentee ballots that will need to be counted, it could take up to 24 hours before they're all counted.
— Election Updates as of 8 p.m. —
Polls close – keep up with results
Polls are closed across almost all of Michigan. Four counties close at 8 p.m. CT.
Election Results:
Michigan election day guide and results for Nov. 8, 2022
Interactive map: Michigan Election results for Nov. 8, 2022
Michigan Election Results: Governor's race
Election Day Results: Michigan's three proposals
Michigan election results: Ballot Proposal 1
Michigan Election Results: Ballot Proposal 2
Michigan Election Results: Ballot Proposal 3 to add abortion to state constitution
Michigan Election Results: Jocelyn Benson vs. Kristina Karamo in secretary of state election
Michigan election results: Attorney general race
Michigan Election Results: 6th Congressional District
Michigan Election Results: 7th Congressional District - Slotkin vs Barrett
Michigan Election Results: 10th Congressional District - John James vs. Carl Marlinga
Michigan Election Results: 11th Congressional District - Haley Stevens vs Mark Ambrose
Michigan Election Results: 12th Congressional District - Rashida Tlaib vs. Steven Elliott
Michigan Election Results: 13th Congressional District - Shri Thanedar vs. Martell Bivings
Few reports of poll challengers
According to Rollow, there have been few reports of challengers bothering voters at polls.
He noted that a person at an Ann Arbor poll was challenging people who were bringing their absentee ballots in, so they can vote in person. This is legal, and it is called surrendering your ballot.
Another challenger was reported at a Detroit polling place. This person was in the hall telling people they did not look eligible to vote.
"It didn’t have an impact on voters. They continued to walk past the person and cast their ballots," Rollow said.
Tabulators not working
Of the approximately 4,000 tabulators in Michigan, 10 of the machines stopped working at some time during election day, the secretary of state said during its 3 p.m. update. All of them are back and working, the office said.
The number of machines not working, which adds up to a quarter of 1% of all tabulators, is "totally within the norm" and not evidence of a systemic problem. A spokesman said the incidents happened around the state and were not concentrated in any one place.
"That’s pretty common for an election," Rollow said.
Any voters who couldn't insert their ballot into the tabulator instead could submit them in an auxiliary bin where the ballots would be counted separately if the tabulators couldn't be fixed. Once the tabulators were fixed, the ballots were then inserted and counted.
Higher-than-expected turnout
Election clerks were reporting from around the state that in-person voting was higher than expected in Michigan, the secretary of state's office said.
"There are lots of people voting in person, and it seems to be going well," Rollow said Tuesday evening.
Along with the increase in turnout, there have also been 12,537 same-day voter registrations as of the 7 p.m. update.
The secretary of state said that surges in this category typically happen in college towns where young people vote. In Ann Arbor, there were 631 new registrations while 543 same-day registrations were reported in East Lansing. Rollow said there are long lines at clerk's offices in both cities as people register to vote.
If you are in line to register or vote by 8 p.m., you will be allowed to.
Same-day registrations come with an absentee ballot, which is why the numbers of requested ballots in that category are higher than when they started.
In 2020, the presidential race saw approximately 30,000 same-day registrations.
Absentee ballots requested and returned
A total of 2,025,581 absentee ballots had been requested for the midterms and 1,832,931 of them had been returned to election clerks as of 5 p.m.
The number of absentee ballots that are requested is expected to increase as is normal for election day since anyone who registers to vote the day of receives an absentee ballot. Rollow expects the majority of requested ballots to be returned before polls close.
MORE: What is a ‘red mirage’ and can we expect one on election night?
First-time voters
The secretary of state said 297,754 people have registered to vote in Michigan since January.
The state also believes of the 8,215,740 registered voters in Michigan, 7,281,373 are active voters. Those are people who have voted sometime in the past six years.
Pollbook problems in Detroit
One issue flagged by secretary of state officials has been resolved after it created problems for some Detroit voters early Tuesday.
Ballots issued to some in-person voters were coming up as already assigned to an absentee ballot from a separate voter. Some voters were told to fill out a provisional ballot, though all of these ballots were annotated and will be counted as usual.
Rollow said the issue, of which the root cause has not been determined, has been resolved. It appears to have affected only a handful of precincts in Detroit and had to do with the sequence of numbers issued on some in-person ballots coming up as already being issued as an absentee ballot.
The electronic pollbook, which is a file downloaded the night before by election clerks and is used to verify if a voter is registered to vote and if they had already requested or submitted an absentee ballot, would alert workers that the number had already been used for a separate ballot.
Voters who did cast a provisional ballot as a remedy will not need to show proof of a voter registration since the issue is a flaw with the technology and not with the voter's status.
As a remedy, whenever the issue shows up again, election workers were instructed by the Detroit city clerk to mark the ballot with an X to signify it was an in-person ballot. The Detroit branch of the NAACP mentioned computer glitches being an issue for voters, which the secretary of state said is the same problem.
RELATED: Feds monitoring elections in Detroit, 4 other Michigan cities
Any people who came across the issue and decided against voting are encouraged to return to cast a ballot.
The department issued a statement about the problem:
"Today, the Michigan Bureau of Elections assisted the Detroit City Clerk's office to quickly address an issue with the city's e-pollbooks and ensured that all voters were able to vote. E-pollbooks are the laptops that are used at polling places to confirm voters are registered and that they have not already voted absentee.
"According to the Detroit Clerk's office, after confirming each voter was registered and had not been issued or cast an absentee ballot, poll workers provided a numbered ballot to each voter. Occasionally this morning, some e-pollbooks then displayed an error message stating that the number on the ballot at the polling place was the same as the number on an absentee ballot that had already been issued, even though the voter had not actually voted absentee. When this occurred, voters were correctly checked in on a paper backup list and issued ballots that were cast by the voters. These ballots will be counted.
"Whether using the electronic pollbook or the paper backup, procedures are in place to ensure a voter casts only one ballot."
Election worker rules
Rules for election challengers and poll workers remain unchanged from the August primary.
While a court recently suspended the new rules, a state supreme court decision overruled the option last week. The rules for election workers and how they were trained remain the same.
Rollow said the department is also further ahead of combating misinformation than it was in 2020 since the rumors and false narratives about the election "was weaponized ahead" of voting day two years ago.
MORE: How to report voter intimidation and election misinformation in Michigan
"They (election workers) have become quite accustomed to dealing with misinformation and people who don't believe elections are legitimate," Rollow said.