A top Michigan official warned of a nightmare situation on election night in which counting mail-in votes holds up the results of the presidential contest if the decision depends on winning the state’s 16 electoral votes.
“This is a perfect storm that could be created. We don’t want Michigan to be the last state reporting on Election Day in 2020. We don’t want to be the Florida … of 2020,” said Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, at the U.S. Election Assistance Commission summit in Washington on Tuesday. Florida held up the 2000 election results for weeks due to a recount of votes between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
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Although Michigan voters have been allowed for decades to mail their ballots ahead of decision day, Benson said she is worried that the practice could hold up the results because more voters are expected to make use of it. In one Michigan county that she did not name, 80% of votes were cast by mail.
“One of our biggest challenges that keeps us up at night is that many of Michigan statutes have not yet updated to match this new right that voters have in Michigan to be able to vote absentee without having to state a reason,” Benson said. “That works if a third of the citizens, or third of the voters, are casting ballots. That way, two-thirds are having ballots counted at precinct. It doesn’t work if the numbers flip and you have two-thirds, which I’m anticipating, of citizens voting from home this year, having ballots sent to a centralized location.”
Benson said state officials are reminding and educating voters on ways to vote ahead of the big day, and those efforts saw huge results in the midterm with increases in mail-in ballots. But the state is not ready to count so many mail-in ballots in a presidential election year, when, historically, more people vote than in midterms.
The law mandates that mailed ballots not be inspected and counted until after polls close on Election Day, putting a lot of pressure on clerks forced to count stacks of papers well into the night after West Coast states have reported results.
Benson said unless the law is changed to allow clerks to start counting ballots earlier, Michigan could have a problem on its hands 10 months from now.
