Why early vote returns might produce a 'mirage' on election night in Michigan

It could take a full 24 hours after Election Day for Michigan clerks to process all of the absentee ballots cast in next week's election, according to Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s office, a development that experts say might produce early Tuesday night results that don't reflect who eventually wins.

New polling indicates early election results might initially skew toward Republicans who are more inclined to vote at the polls on Tuesday and result in their votes getting counted faster, while Democrats have banked absentee votes ahead of Election Day that use a longer process to count.

In a poll of 600 likely voters last week, 70% of those who had already cast an absentee ballot indicated support for Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, while 30% indicated they backed Republican challenger Tudor Dixon. The poll commissioned by The Detroit News and WDIV-TV (Channel 4) and conducted between Oct. 26-28 has a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points.

Glengariff Group pollster Richard Czuba, who conducted the survey, said the 70-30 break is a significant indicator of how early in-person numbers may create a “red mirage” that doesn’t take into account Democratic absentee voters. A similar phenomenon occurred in November 2020, when Republican President Donald Trump took an early Tuesday night lead in Michigan but was overtaken by Democrat Joe Biden when Democratic strongholds like Detroit with lots of absentee votes reported most of their results the Wednesday after the election.

Polling conducted as recently as last week indicates Republicans, by and large, are “going to the ballot box,” Czuba said. But “Democrats are splitting their vote, in terms of voting by mail and going to the ballot box."

“We’re going to see these early numbers that are Election Day numbers that are Republican-leaning and in no way reflect the total electorate," Czuba said.

With one week to go, Michigan voters have requested 1.9 million absentee ballots and returned about 1.1 million ballots to their clerks — adding to the stacks that will need to be tabulated when polls open at 7 a.m. on Election Day.

The 1.1 million ballots returned by voters is about half of the absentee ballots that voters had submitted a week ahead of the November 2020 presidential election, but the state still expects processing times to parallel the 2020 timeline because clerks typically hire fewer workers for a midterm election.

It’s likely that some jurisdictions will have their results in earlier than the 24-hour timeframe or have enough results for the media to call a race, said Jake Rollow, a Benson spokesman.

But the Secretary of State's office is asking voters to be patient and to be prepared if it takes longer.

“No matter the time it takes, the fact that it is taking time a) is structurally created by the laws of our state and b) is really a demonstration that clerks take their work seriously and they want to process and count all valid votes and to do so in a secure and accurate way,” Rollow said.

Benson, a Democrat, is running for reelection against Republican Kristina Karamo, who has filed a lawsuit in Wayne County Circuit Court contending that most absentee ballots shouldn't be counted and that Detroit residents should be required to vote in person or pick up their ballot in person, even though the Michigan Constitution allows absentee voting.

Absentee ballot trends

Since 2018, absentee ballots have accounted for about 50% of the overall vote in Michigan primaries and general elections, Rollow said. If that same dynamic were to play out Tuesday, roughly half of the results would be available shortly after 8 p.m. while the other half of votes might take more time to tally.

Because Democratic voters usually make up a majority of the absentee ballots cast, it’s likely that in-person results at the close of polls may indicate a Republican lead in certain statewide contests that could be curbed by later absentee results.

“What matters is when all of those absentees are counted,” Czuba said. “Then we can assess where those races stand.”

The "red mirage" experienced in 2020 was relatively new for Michigan voters, who had yet to experience the glut of absentee ballots that could be produced through a combination of new absentee rules and pandemic avoidance of in-person voting, said Matt Grossmann, a political scientist and director of Michigan State University's Institute for Public Policy and Social Research.

Still, the phenomenon wasn't unique to Michigan.

"We had a blue mirage in states like Ohio where they actually counted the absentee ballots first, rather than counting the in-person ballots because they were allowed to do absentee ballot processing earlier," Grossmann said.

A partisan split in how to vote, combined with "people who've decided it's in their interest to question election results," can feed the confusion over the swing in votes, he said.

Voters might need more than four years with no-reason absentee voting to fully understand the swings, especially given the misinformation circulated after 2020, said retired longtime elections lawyer John Pirich.

"I don't think voters understand much of the system," said Pirich, who will spend his first election as a poll worker on Tuesday.

Absentee ballot returns have been coming in higher than in the 2018 gubernatorial election but lower than the 2020 presidential election — in part because of the unique circumstances surrounding those past statewide elections. In 2018, no-reason absentee voting was not yet available. In 2020, turnout was higher because of the presidential race and absentees were used more because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A week out from the election in 2018, nearly 1.1 million absentee ballots had been requested and 703,000 returned. A week out from the 2020 election, roughly 3.1 million absentee ballots had been requested and 2.1 million returned.

The decrease in absentee numbers from 2020 combined with learned efficiencies in vote counting over the past couple of years have some clerks optimistic about when unofficial results could be available.

State Rep. Ann Bollin, the former Brighton Township clerk and the Republican who leads the House Elections Committee, said a proposed House bill would attempt to address the issue of "misinformation" about the timing of results by prohibiting localities from posting results until all absentee and in-person results are in.

But other passed measures and circumstances should speed up the posting of absentee and in-person results, Bollin said.

Clerks have more high-speed tabulators, likely half the number of ballots than 2020, trained employees who just worked the high-turnout August primary and the option to pre-process absentee ballots.

"I think it will be more efficient," Bollin said.

Small gains with pre-processing

In late September, the GOP-led Legislature passed bills that allowed clerks to pre-process absentee ballots two days ahead of the election, but the allowance is narrow. For communities of 10,000 people or more, election officials are permitted to open the outer envelope, which contains the secrecy sleeve that holds the absentee ballot, and check the ballot number on the return envelope.

Because the allowance is so narrow, dozens of communities are taking a pass on the pre-processing offer and instead waiting to start counting when polls open at 7 a.m. Tuesday.

In total, 38 communities will take advantage of the offer, including Detroit and Grand Rapids, to shave off whatever time they can ahead of Election Day.

The first priority for clerks, Ottawa County Clerk Justin Roebuck said, is counting the absentee ballots securely and correctly. That takes time, and state laws don’t allow much opportunity to speed up the process, he said.

“There’s a reality that the workflow of counting absentee ballots is really time-intensive, and it’s important to get it right,” Roebuck said.

The Legislature could do more to speed up the process, former state elections director Chris Thomas said, including allowing clerks to run absentee ballots through tabulators ahead of the election as other states permit.

Still, the state’s largest city hopes to be posting partial results on election night, said Thomas, who oversaw Michigan's election for 36 years and is now assisting in Detroit's election administration.

“We want to make sure that by the end of the evening, there’s a large portion of the Detroit returns posted,” Thomas said.

But even in-person results could be delayed Tuesday as the state continues to transition away from the electronic transmission of results from local tabulators to county clerks. Instead, local communities will rely on a hand delivery of results — a change that led to some delays in in-person results during the August primary.

“Relying on that initial hand delivering of results first will cause additional time delays in the process," Roebuck said. "There’s just no way around it."

eleblanc@detroitnews.com