Hi, readers! 

The election is well underway here in Michigan — already, nearly 300,000 people have voted, about 4%  of all active registered voters in the state. If you vote absentee, you should have your ballot by now (reach out to me if you haven’t!). Clerks have an obligation to make those available as soon as they have them.

Folks have a lot of questions about absentee voting, otherwise known as voting by mail. Voters approved the right to no-reason absentee voting back in 2020, and it exploded in popularity in 2020. Two years later, we approved the right to be on the permanent absentee list, meaning voters have the opportunity to get their ballot automatically mailed to them every election.

It’s a lot more flexibility than we see in many states, but that has raised some questions. Namely: How the heck does this whole thing work? I’m going to answer a few questions here, but if you have more, you can always reach out to me — I’m at [email protected].

The answer is typically “as few as possible,” because there are strict rules about maintaining the chain of custody throughout the process to ensure that an election is fair. You hold it, of course, as does your clerk or whoever is putting it in the envelope. It gets handled by the postal system and your mail carrier if you have it delivered to your home, as well as whoever processes it when it returns to the clerk’s office. 

There is also a team of folks, usually between three and five people, who verify the signature, open it, and feed it into the tabulator when it comes time to process it. This is done in a very specific way to ensure that no one who sees the ballot also sees whose ballot it is, protecting your privacy. Every step of that is documented thoroughly.

So in all? Typically fewer than 10 people, although that can vary depending on your jurisdiction.

The fastest way, especially when clerks and their staff are busy juggling the many, many tasks that are required to put on an election, is to check the Michigan Voter Information Center. If you access it on a computer, there will be a small box in the top righthand corner that shows the date the clerk’s office got your ballot back and marked it as returned.

This is typically a pretty easy process! I’ve done it myself.  You can go to your polling place or early voting location when it’s open and simply tell them you got a mail ballot but want to vote in person. It’s fastest if you bring your ballot along (you’ll have to surrender it), but if you forget it, they can cancel that ballot remotely so it doesn’t also get counted if it somehow gets returned.

From there, the poll workers will issue you a new ballot, and you’re free to vote as you please.

It always has been! There’s been a lot of contention around what voting by mail may look like this year after a number of efforts from the federal government to limit the practice. But, as my wonderful colleagues across the country have reported, the Supreme Court blocked that effort for the midterms, meaning mail ballots can be used as normal. The postal system is supposed to process them as usual, but if you’re worried about your ballot making it back to your clerk in time, I recommend you put it in a drop box instead of the mailbox. 

And remember, in-person voting early or on Election Day is always an option! You can look up your community’s information here.

Do you know someone else who is keeping an eye on these beautiful peninsulas in the midterms and beyond? Encourage them to subscribe to this newsletter.

Finally: A sincere apology to all the readers who noted I failed to include a bunny picture in my last newsletter. Puff and Honey are both totally fine — it’s just their mother has election brain, and forgot to attach the image. 

As a thank-you for your patience, here are TWO bunny pictures.

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