Michigan’s mail-in ballot count indicates strong voter turnout

More than 150,000 Michigan voters voted by mail a month before the Nov. 8 election that will decide the state’s governor, secretary of state, attorney general and whether abortion access will be a right constitutional.

A total of 1.6 million people have applied for mail-in ballots so far, surpassing the 1.16 million who chose the option in the 2018 midterm elections. Figures indicate that 2022 could be the most votes ever cast in the state for a gubernatorial election, Secretary of State spokesman Jake Rollow said Tuesday.

A record 3.3 million people in Michigan voted absentee in the 2020 presidential election at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

Rollow said he expects the state « to end up with about 2.25 million mail-in ballots submitted if things were to play out along similar trends, » through the 2020 election. The Secretary of State will continue to publish the number of absentees weekly in the run-up to the election.

A 2018 voter-approved constitutional amendment that allowed mail-in voting without an excuse, on top of the pandemic, has led voters across the state to increasingly vote by mail rather than at the polls on Election Day.

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In addition to high-impact races for governor, attorney general and secretary of state, a ballot initiative in November to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution is expected to draw strong voter turnout.

The low percentage of mail-in ballots returned on Monday lends heightened importance to a gubernatorial debate on Thursday between Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Republican challenger Tudor Dixon.

The debate will bring increased visibility to Dixon, who has struggled to build voter favor on television due to a lack of fundraising and publicity attacks from pro-Whitmer groups. A $3.5 million ad buy from the Republican Governors Association will begin running pro-Dixon ads in Michigan on Wednesday.

While early voting in the state began Sept. 29, clerks can only begin processing returned ballots the Sunday before Election Day under an agreement reached last month by Whitmer and the Republican-controlled Legislative Assembly.

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Clerks are allowed to remove absentee ballots from their outer envelopes, but still cannot remove secret pockets or count votes until 7 a.m. on Election Day.

Delays in results in the battleground state, which has one of the most decentralized electoral systems in the country, have given way to the spread of misinformation in the past.

Michigan does not require voters to identify their party affiliation when voting in a general election, which makes it unclear whether more Democrats or Republicans are voting by mail.

Kristina Karamo, the Michigan GOP nominee for Secretary of State, and GOP Attorney General nominee Matthew DePerno have both claimed during their campaigns that mail-in voting leads to increased fraud.

At a recent rally for former President Donald Trump in Warren that featured Michigan GOP state and congressional candidates, MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell encouraged voters to wait to vote until ‘on polling day, because postal voting makes it « easier to cheat ».

Michigan-based pollster Bernie Porn said polls from his firm, EPIC-MRA, showed more Democrats plan to vote by mail in the upcoming general election than Republicans.

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An initiative on this year’s ballot launched by Promote The Vote, a voting rights group that helped pass the 2018 No Reason Mail-In Voting Amendment, would further increase the accessibility of mail-in voting . Among other things, the initiative would allow people to register on a permanent list to receive mail-in ballots each election, while requiring nine days of in-person early voting.