First weekend of Michigan early voting sees over 10,000 ballots cast in August Primary
DETROIT (FOX 2) - The first weekend of early voting in Michigan was mostly successful with more than 10,000 ballots cast on Saturday and Sunday while officials reported only a minor technology hiccup that election clerks managed to sidestep to ensure things ran smoothly.
The Secretary of State said it was vital the state's election systems ran without issues during the August Primary and November General Election due to Michigan's importance on the national state.
With more than a week until election day, Jocelyn Benson said her department was already seeing efforts to undermine the integrity of the election.
"Because of the spotlight our state will be under, we anticipate and are already seeing significant scores of efforts to confuse citizens about their options to vote and the security of their options and the accuracy of our result," she said.
There were 6,400 ballots cast on Saturday and 4,200 cast on Sunday, Benson said during a Monday press conference. This year will be the first election in Michigan to feature early voting options everywhere in the state.
Along with no-reason absentee voting options, the executive director of a nonpartisan election hub said Michigan has quickly become a model for making it easy for voters to participate in elections while ensuring things remain secure.
"This is why Michigan in 2024 is more secure than Michigan has ever been," said David Becker, of the Center for Election Innovation & Research.
Early voting became part of Michigan's constitution in 2022 when voters approved a ballot proposal that guaranteed at least nine days of available voting options ahead of an election. Along with the 10,600 early-tabulated votes, more than 700,000 absentee ballots that were requested have since been submitted to respective clerks.
Benson said having enough voting options alleviates stress on clerks and their volunteers by removing the pressure of having everything work on the same day when every ballot is cast.
According to Melanie Ryska, the Sterling Heights city clerk, this general election will be much easier to facilitate than four years ago because workers can begin processing ballots that are mailed in ahead of election day.
It took a team of 90 people 27 hours to process 42,000 absentee ballots in 2020, she said.
"That's a huge strain on the process overall, so with early voting we hope to have some of those voters vote early, and then with pre-processing and early tabulation we hope to alleviate some of that work and some of that strain that we have on election day," she said. "That will give us an opportunity to focus on the ballots that are being returned the day before or on election night."
Affected Michigan Server
The only problem that officials reported during early voting was on Saturday when a server affected some clerk's ability to connect to the early voting e-poll book. However, backup procedures were already in place that enabled voting to continue seamlessly, Benson said.
She said the server that had issues began running slowly due to a number of other applications that were also running on it.
Benson said that caused a spike in activity, which slowed the application that connects to poll books.
"I'm confident it won't happen again, but I was - as it unfolded - grateful to see is how clerks who had been trained to know how to respond in the instance of any technology failing that they quickly responded with the backup plans we had in place," she said.
Michigan early voting for August Primary begins July 27 - everything to know
The first ballots to be cast in the August Primary will be tabulated starting tomorrow.