GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — We might find out who wins Michigan earlier this year than the last presidential election.
Clerks say a change in state law giving them the option to tabulate absentee ballots before Election Day could speed up the counting of results. No vote totals are generated until Election Day.
“We started a week before Election Day, whereas in 2020 and 2022, we couldn’t start until election morning,” Grand Rapids City Clerk Joel Hondorp said. “It took us a long time to go through all the ballots.”
As of late Thursday morning, the Grand Rapids clerk’s office has received more than 28,000 absentee ballots. They’ve already processed about 60% of those, 17,000 ballots. Nearly 10,000 people have taken advantage of early in-person voting.
Election workers have been processing absentee ballots in Grand Rapids since Tuesday. It’s a process that’s open to the public to observe. News 8 saw several bipartisan teams processing the ballots at GRPS University Thursday morning.
Thanks to pre-processing, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson has said she expects the state’s unofficial results to be released by the end of the day Wednesday, Nov. 6.
Ottawa County Clerk Justin Roebuck said after the polls close on election night, you will first see the in-person votes from Election Day and early voting. The absentee votes will show up last because it’s a more complicated process.
“We’re looking at the envelope for the voter, we’re crossing that voter’s name off a list and marking them as having voted,” Roebuck told News 8. “We’re double-verifying the signatures in place, we’re verifying the numbered stub on the top of the ballot matches what is on the envelope.”
While it’s believed the change will speed things up, it will still take time to verify absentee ballots. That’s also because absentee ballots can be submitted in drop boxes and in-person at the clerk’s office up until the polls close. Those last-minute ballots then go through a signature verification process, comparing the voter signature to what’s on the qualified voter file before it’s sent to tabulation.
“What is most important is accuracy and the integrity of the process,” Roebuck said. “There are verification steps that are happening that do take time. We definitely appreciate the patience of our voters as we walk through those steps and process those absentee ballots.”
Based on past elections, Roebuck expects fully-reported or nearly fully-reported results to come sometime after midnight in Ottawa County, But that won’t be the case everywhere, especially in larger urban areas.
Hondorp said the pre-processing of absentee ballots will likely speed up results, but at the end of the day, the integrity of the election is most important.
“As I always say, we don’t give up accuracy for speed,” he said. “We’ll do all of our due diligence to make sure we get the results there.”