Ensuring Safe and Secure Elections: A Primer

Oct 31

[Editor: In preparation for next week’s election, we at The Ford have been working closely with our partners at The Carter Center and Keep Our Republic and Team Democracy, as well as other organizations, to help rebuild trust and reassure the public about the reliability of our electoral systems. The numbers are disturbing: a significant percentage of the voting public has expressed a lack of confidence in our election processes. We believe this lack of confidence results from misunderstanding and misinformation.

To address many of the questions people have, we have asked two election officials to provide answers. These questions were presented to Lisa Posthumus Lyons, County Clerk for Kent County, and Justin Roebuck, County Clerk for Ottawa County, both in MI.]

1. How secure is mail-in balloting?

Absentee voting by mail is secure. Before an absentee ballot is accepted to be counted, the voter’s signature on the back of the return envelope is verified by the local clerk against their signature in the voter file. Each ballot has a number stub that is assigned to the voter, and the number stub matches the number on the envelope (the number stub is removed during the process in order to protect the voter’s secret ballot). These numbers are checked on returned absentee ballots to ensure they match. Voters can return their ballots via mail, in person at their local clerk’s office, or their jurisdiction’s secure drop box. They can also bring their absentee ballot to the early voting site or precinct on election day and tabulate it right there. Drop boxes are locked up, monitored, and only the clerk, their deputy, or their sworn staff have access to them. Ballots are regularly extracted from drop boxes, and there is a recorded log of information such as the name of the individual collecting the ballot and the date, which provides a chain of custody.

2. What is ballot harvesting, and is it a problem?

Ballot harvesting is where an individual or organization offers to collect and return a person’s (or group of people’s) voted absentee ballot. Ballot harvesting is illegal in Michigan, and this is to protect the voter from coercion, to protect the secrecy of their vote, and to protect the integrity of the election. It is a felony for anyone to be in possession of an absentee ballot except the voter, a member of the voter’s immediate family or household who the voter has asked to return the ballot, authorized election officials, or an employee of the postal service or common mail carrier during the course of their job.

3. Are illegal immigrants voting in the upcoming election?

In the dozens of elections which we have overseen, we have never encountered an illegal immigrant casting a ballot. Having said that, should a situation arise where an illegal immigrant- or any individual- fraudulently casts a ballot, they will be prosecuted and held accountable. In order to register to vote an individual needs to provide his or her driver’s license/state ID number of the last four digits of their social security number. Additionally, as the state transitions to Real ID, a birth certificate is required, and this verifies citizenship. While we haven’t experienced illegal immigrants voting, we can say, however, that we have had a handful of rare occasions where non-citizens (who are in the United States legally) have been inadvertently registered to vote. In each of these instances, the matter was self-reported when the individuals learned of their registration status, and the situation was immediately addressed. These individuals desire to abide by the laws of this land; registering and attempting to vote is an enormous risk to their ability to remain in this country, so our experience has shown they do NOT want to be on our voter rolls, let alone cast a ballot.

4. How secure from hacking are the electronic counting systems? Did insecure “voting machines” change the outcome of the election?

We have full faith in the security of our electronic election equipment. Our tabulators are essentially big calculators; they are physically sealed up and passcode-protected to prevent tampering, and they are NOT connected to the internet at any point in the election process. Before every election, our equipment is tested to ensure the tabulator is functioning properly and assigning votes accurately. The test is open to the public, and we encourage everyone to attend. Finally, and most importantly, we have the PAPER BALLOT! The ballot is crucial to ensuring the election results are accurate because we always have a record that can be audited and recounted. If an aggrieved candidate requests a recount, the paper ballots are hand-counted to confirm the outcome of that election. Following the election, a public post-election audit is conducted on a number of randomly selected precincts, where the accuracy of the tabulator is verified against a hand count of ballots and race results. Shortly after the election is certified, the paper ballots- which are stored securely in sealed ballot containers for 22 months after the election- become available for the public to view.

5. How do you manage voter rolls to ensure dead people are not voting?

There are multiple fronts where deceased voters are removed from the voter list. First, county clerks- whose offices receive and keep all death records within their county- are required to regularly flag in the voter file voters who have died in their county. This triggers a notice to the city/township clerk that the voter must be removed from the list. Additionally, the state Bureau of Elections receives data weekly from the Social Security office, which they use to remove deceased voters as well. Finally, our City and Township Clerks also remove any voters in their communities by identifying names from public notices of death.

6. What happens if someone passes away between casting an absentee ballot and election day?

If a voter casts an absentee ballot and then subsequently dies before election day, that voter’s absentee ballot is retrieved, marked as rejected, and not counted. However, during the nine-day early voting period and in jurisdictions that process absentee ballots prior to election day (up to eight days prior for jurisdictions larger than 5,000; up to one day before for all other jurisdictions)- both of which are new this year- those votes are counted because they have already been tabulated. In order to protect voters’ right to a secret ballot, once they are tabulated, there is no way to identify which ballot belongs to which voter. [Editor's note: According to the Michigan Bureau of Election's Auditor General's Report of March 2022, the total number of votes cast in this manner over the prior eight election cycles was 2,775.]

Looking back:

7. Let’s turn our attention back to the 2020 election. How do you explain the 2 AM “ballot dumps” that seemed to favor Democrats?

First, 2020 was simply unprecedented: it was the first presidential election where Michigan allowed for no-reason absentee voting, and we were in the midst of the Covid 19 pandemic. Both of these factors resulted in record number of voters casting absentee ballots (for perspective, the number of absentee ballots issued in Kent County for the 2020 Presidential Election was 227,096 while the number of absentee ballots issued for the 2016 Presidential Election was 70,779). While the law has changed since 2020, at that time, absentee ballots were not allowed to be processed until polls opened on election day, so there were an unprecedented amount of absentee ballots that were being counted in a small window of time. Additionally, absentee ballots continue to be returned up until 8:00pm on election day. In order to ensure security and integrity, those ballots needed to be verified by the local clerk’s office before being accepted and brought to the absentee counting board for processing. Counting and verifying ballots is not a delay in the process, it IS the process. As to how the absentee voting results toward the end seemed to favor one party over another, throughout the 2020 election cycle, the Republican candidate at the top of the ticket tended to discourage absentee voting, while the Democratic candidate at the top of the ticket encouraged it, so it’s not surprising that this had an effect on the partisan makeup of the vote as these candidates’ supporters cast their ballots. Additionally, jurisdictions that were last to report tended to be heavier-populated cities (more voters equals more ballots to verify and count). Results from previous elections going back decades will attest that these areas tend to favor Democrats.

8. How do you respond to the claim that “ballot tampering” occurred in 2020?

The handling and storage of ballots follows a strict chain of custody under the law, and ballots must be sealed after counting by bi-partisan teams. Ballots are stored in approved containers and sealed with tamper-evident seals, with seal numbers stored in multiple places. It’s important to know that our ballots are uniquely designed to be read by the tabulator specifically programmed for that precinct’s election. A ballot from one precinct can’t be inserted into a tabulator in a different precinct, let alone a different township, city, or county. If a ballot doesn’t match the election for which the tabulator is programmed, the tabulator will reject the ballot.

Looking ahead:

9. How concerned ought voters to be about a contested election?

We would do well to remember that throughout our nation’s history, high-stakes, controversial elections aren’t new; not accepting the outcome of elections isn’t new; legal challenges following elections aren’t new. We think it’s very possible that- regardless of the outcome- there will be legal challenges brought forward, and we view this as one more part of the process to ensure our elections are legal, fair, and accurate. Our courts must be expected to operate based on the rule of law rather that the rules of passion or politics, and we hope any challenges brought forward pertaining to this election will represent valid, legitimate questions or clarity which require judicial determination, and not simply frivolous fishing expeditions.

10. What processes are in place to deal with recounts and complaints of fraud?

Recounts are an important part of our process. Within six days after the election is certified, an aggrieved candidate (or ballot committee for ballot proposals) has the opportunity to petition for a recount. If the margin of a statewide race is within 2000 votes, an automatic recount of that race is triggered. Recounts are overseen by the bi-partisan board of canvassers, are conducted by a hand-tally of the ballots, and they are open to the public. Claims of fraud should be taken seriously and investigated. A credible claim of election fraud is turned over to law enforcement for investigation and- if appropriate- criminal charges. Individuals who commit election fraud will be held accountable through the justice system.

[Editor: We encourage readers to go to The Principles for Trusted Elections website, check out the important work being done there, and to sign the pledge.]