Michigan officials don’t expect to be able to count all the ballots on Election Day.
Michigan’s election results will likely not be finalized until after Election Day, the state’s top election official said on Oct. 20.
Voting has already begun in the swing state, which went for then-Republican nominee Donald Trump in 2016 and then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden in 2020.
“We do have more options to process ballots sooner than Election Day, which is where we were restricted in 2020. So, I’m optimistic we could see results even sooner,” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson
said on CBS‘ “Face the Nation.” “But I would estimate end of the day on Wednesday as the best guess on how we’ll perform.”
Benson said officials in Michigan will be prioritizing accuracy and security over speed.
Michigan reported final unofficial results in 2020 at 8 p.m. the day after Election Day.
It was one of multiple states that were unable to finish processing ballots by the end of Election Day 2020, which fell on Nov. 3 that year, causing Biden’s win to not be confirmed until Nov. 7. The 2016 results were finalized the day after the election.
One million people, or 14.2 percent of what Michigan describes as the active voting population, have already
cast ballots for 2024. Many have opted to return mail-in ballots, also known as absentee ballots. Some 2.2 million absentee ballots were sent to voters, according to Benson’s office.
The number of people registered to vote in Michigan
is 8.4 million, even though the number of residents who are old enough to vote is just
7.9 million. Michigan officials say the discrepancy stems from a federal law that requires the state to not remove people from the voting rolls until they either do not respond to mailing notices or do not vote in two consecutive federal elections.
Republicans
sued Benson earlier in the year, alleging Michigan officials have failed to properly maintain voter rolls and that the failure is disenfranchising voters. They pointed to a federal law that requires states to regularly remove voters who have died or moved, in addition to those who haven’t voted for a while.
The number of registered voters is “impossibly high,” Republicans stated in their complaint. They said the only explanation is “substandard list maintenance.”
Michigan officials
urged the court to dismiss the case, saying they have followed federal law, as shown by the cancellation of more than 700,000 voter registrations since 2019, and the list of inactive voters slated to be purged in the coming years. According to the
Michigan Department of State, 339,551 registrations are due to be canceled in 2025, and another 258,175 are slated for removal in 2027.
The federal court that is overseeing the case has not yet issued a ruling.
