- [Narrator] The 2020 midterm election's next week, but the voting process, under scrutiny, seems like never before.

Coming up: "Beyond the Ballot Box:" a one-hour, One Detroit election special with the Detroit Free Press, where we explain how the vote really works here in Michigan.

Stay with us.

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(upbeat electronic music) - Welcome to "Beyond the Ballot Box," a One Detroit election special.

We've teamed up with the Detroit Free Press to examine the midterm election.

We're not talking about who's running, but how the vote is run, the process.

Will we get an outcome we can trust?

I'm One Detroit Senior Producer Bill Kubota, joined by some of the Detroit Free Press political team, and Emily Lawler, Clara Hendrickson, and Paul Egan.

Thanks for joining me.

- Thanks for having us.

- Thank you.

- Well, we're talking about things like early voting, the absentee vote, voting inspectors, the voting machines themselves, all that.

Where are we now, a week before election?

Where do we stand, Emily?

- Yeah, certainly we've seen a lot of confusion over these routine election processes, and one of the things that we set out to do at the Free Press was explain that ahead of the election, so that people knew, going in, what to expect.

And I hope that's something people get out of this special too.

- A lot of absentee voting.

That's kind of what's changed a lot, in the past few election cycles.

What about that, Clara?

- Yeah, so we saw a huge uptick in absentee voting in 2020, which was the first major election where every voter in the state had a right to cast an absentee ballot.

And we're seeing voters continue to embrace that, right?

As of October 24th, we have 1.8 million requests that have been made for an absentee ballot, and over 770,000 voters have already returned their absentee ballots, so that's two weeks out of a major election, and potentially, one that could see record turnout.

- And voters themselves are voting on more, a proposal that actually affects voting itself too.

This is Proposal 2, what about that?

- Right, so the future rules of elections are on the ballot.

If voters embrace this constitutional amendment, it would allow early voting.

There would be at least nine days of early voting in the state, so voters would go to early voting sites, fill out a ballot, just as they would at a polling location, put it in the tabulator, and then it would also expand on the new right to absentee voting, requiring municipalities to have drop boxes, prepaid postage for absentee ballot requests, and ballot return envelopes.

And voters could also apply with a single application to request an absentee ballot for every future election.

- These are things that are pretty clear-cut to voters.

They all make sense, right?

Is it something that other places, like other states, are doing that we're gonna do too, if it passes?

- So some portions of the amendment are things that are already in place in other states.

Many states have early voting, Michigan doesn't.

Right now, voters can fill out an absentee ballot in person at a clerk's office and return it.

But this would be a kind of way to just create more methods of voting, so voters could sort of choose their own adventure.

- Now this is just one proposal, Proposal 2.

There's some others, and that's probably, Paul, raising attention this election cycle.

- Yes, Bill, there's always a lot of debate about whether and to what extent ballot proposals drive turnout, but there's certainly some evidence that one of the three proposals on this election, Proposal 3, which would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, that it's driving turnout on both sides.

There's a lot of energy around the abortion issue, after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe versus Wade in June.

- So here now, a peek behind the curtain, a look at the voting process.

This summer, we watched voting inspectors being trained at what, two years ago, was the center of some controversy, the TCF Center, now called Huntington Place.

Take a look.

- I'd just like to start off by saying greetings to each and every one of you on behalf of the Detroit Department of Elections and our Detroit City Clerk.

Like I said, I've been doing this since 1985.

I love this stuff, elections is in my blood.

I'd like to welcome each and every one of you to the Central Counting Board training class.

My name is Daniel Baxter.

I just wanna share a couple of things with you, as we engage in this particular training.

Our election inspectors are basically the lifeblood of the operation.

They're the folk who come in at five o'clock in the morning, and every Detroit resident who votes by absentee ballot is definitely depending on them to guarantee that their ballots are processed accurately as well as timely.

- And then there is a secrecy sleeve.

- [Bill] Detroit's elections operation's been under scrutiny for years.

At times, vote count's out of balance, that is, numbers not adding up.

Then came the Trump/Biden election.

Detroit's absentee vote count, at what they used to call the TCF Center, hit by the national spotlight.

- 2020, when all of that happened, it was perhaps the most exciting election that I had ever engaged in.

And I thought 2008 - [Barack] Yes we can.

- [Daniel] was it.

(crowds cheering) - America, we have come so far.

- [Bill] 2008, the year Barack Obama was first elected, lots of Detroit votes to be counted then.

- [Interviewer] Where are you from?

- Oh, I'm from down river.

- [Interviewer] Okay.

- I'm here because of the 38,000 ballots that arrived here at 3:45 a.m., that are just now sitting over there and getting counted.

- [Bill] But 2020 Republicans and President Trump questioned how Detroit handled the vote.

- Detroit is another place, and I wouldn't say has the best reputation for election integrity.

- The craziest it got, were in the middle of folks counting the ballots, you'd get a big group of Republican challengers that would form a circle around one table.

(crowd chanting) Some chanting going on.

And they'd start chanting, "Stop the count, "stop the count," and clapping as they did it.

And as you can see right now, we've got several police officers heading out there on the floor.

And the police would come in, they'd escort 'em out.

- The number of Republican vote watchers were removed from the hall, and so, a group of angry protestors came down and started banging on the windows of the basement of where we were at.

(crowd chanting) - And then you'd have people complaining, "We got kicked out of the process."

Well, you were chanting in the middle of the floor and causing a scene.

(crowds shouting) - All the Republican challengers out of this room.

- [Election Worker] Everybody standing in this area needs to be-- - A lot of conspiracy theories that were being thrown at us.

And there was also a directive from folks.

They said, challenge everything, challenge every ballot.

And they were doing it, they were, "Well, this doesn't look good because of this or because of that, and at some point, someone had to step in and say, "Enough."

- Those people, the way they were behaving, to demand that we stop counting, I mean literally demand.

I can't imagine what would've happened if they had broke down that door and gotten inside.

- People were not only banging on the windows, but they were taking their phones and they were videotaping the counters as they were counting the ballots.

Well, A, that's not allowed, and B, it was intrusive and bothersome.

So the ballot counter said, "Listen, these folks outside the windows are videotaping me," so they taped up the windows.

- One major hub for counting ballots in Detroit covered up the windows again with large pieces of cardboard.

- You know, in the mind of somebody who thinks that they're already being shut out of a process, you put up a piece of paper so that they can't see it, then they're like, "Aha, they're hiding something."

- And so they wanted to protect and block the counting area.

They didn't want anybody seeing the counting, even though these were observers who were legal observers that was supposed to be there.

- [Bill] There were plenty of Republican challengers inside.

Too many actually, working, some perhaps not so civilly, with trained election inspectors.

- We had a lot of training.

We had three days over a period of maybe three weeks.

- Election supervisor Edith Lee-Payne, a Democrat, she was in there.

- Even though I was a supervisor, I had to know what was expected of me as a supervisor.

I also needed to know what challengers, the rights that they had, because they were there.

- [Interviewer] Can you understand some of those folks that showed up that didn't trust the system?

- I can understand why some of the people that showed up not trusting the system, (sighing) because they themselves wanted to, they didn't want, some people can't handle the truth, as has been said in the movie.

- You all excited about this election?

- [Trainees] Yeah.

- I am too.

- [Bill] Despite that turmoil two years ago, these election inspectors have returned to count another day.

- I think that this is probably, these next couple elections are probably gonna be the most important elections of our country.

- We have two shifts, and it's roughly anywhere from 1100 to 1300 people who work to ensure that all of those ballots are processed.

- We are going to go through this training.

This training is probably going to be about three hours or so.

It's for CCB, as Mr. Baxter said, CCB is Central Counting Board.

We count all the absentee ballots for the City of Detroit.

- We stand on the fence, if you will, in terms of engaging in this process.

We're not Democrats, we're not Republicans.

We're a nonpartisan entity, who is responsible to ensure that all ballots are counted.

- The attire for inspectors is white top, black bottom, closed toe shoes, no jeans, no Greek or partisan paraphernalia are allowed.

- When you go to the polls on Election Day, when you cast your vote, you have to fill out an application and you have to sign it.

And that application has to be verified or bumped against your record in the electronic poll book.

The same thing is true for an absentee ballot.

- [Bill] That's part of the process that would be suspect to some who questioned the absentee count in 2020.

They didn't understand or maybe they didn't want to.

- When those ballots come back, we have to verify that signature, to make sure it's the exact same signature that was on file when the individual requested it, and it takes time, so once we processed all of those ballots, then they were delivered to the Central Counting Board, and it was late.

- [Bill] The mysterious late night arrival seen in surveillance video circulated on the internet?

Just ballots that had to be verified ahead of the count.

- They're going to take they first 50 out of whatever precinct that they're working in.

They're gonna go through every single one of those ballots, or that's envelopes, to ensure that there is a signature on each one of those, that there is an election date that is correct, and that the precinct number, which is on the label, is the precinct that we're working in.

- [Bill] In 2020, poll challengers roamed freely on the counting floor-- - Only nonpartisan-- - [Bill] With too many challengers, when some left, they weren't let back in.

- [Protester] You don't know how many are in there.

- [Bill] Now, a new plan.

- So for this year, what we did was, we revamped the entire operation.

For instance, in 2020, they had to sign in on just a regular sheet of paper.

But for this election, they'll be responsible for swiping in with their driver's license so that they might be able to enter.

That information will be uploaded in our system, where we might be able to keep account of who's actually in the Central Counting Board as we process absentee ballots.

Each individual will be given a name tag with their party affiliation or their challenging affiliation on it, as well as, they'll be responsible for being stationed at one of the counting boards/tables.

So instead of roaming about throughout the entire building or throughout the entire Counting Board, they will be restricted to a certain table.

- Cell phones are not permitted in Hall E, not permitted to be used, excuse me.

If you are using a phone in Hall E, you will be asked to leave, and potentially not paid for that day.

- Last year during our municipal election cycle at the Central Counting Board, we probably had less than 100 Republicans to engage in the process.

This year, we received applications for upwards of 800 individuals to work with us on Election Day.

However, at the Central Counting Board, we'll probably have roughly 200, maybe 250 of them to serve as inspectors to help us with the tabulation of the absentee ballots.

- [Bill] Republican election inspector Max Rohtbart, he worked the Detroit primary election in August.

- 2021, actually, the clerk's office, they balanced every precinct at the absentee counting board, something they hadn't done in over 20 years.

It really is a remarkable accomplishment.

- [Bill] Rohtbart's done Oakland County elections for years, but wanted to see Detroit's process, knowing past issues there.

- And usually, if you have about over 30 precincts, there's at least one that's out of balance, because you're working a 13 to 17-hour shift.

And if you make one mistake and you don't catch it, you're off.

- [Trainer] Now, this supply box has everything that you need for the entire day.

We have below the supply box a black bin.

- We received kudos from both the Wayne County Board of Canvassers, as well as the State Bureau of Elections for our efforts.

So we're excited about that.

As we begin to engage in the off-year election here for the gubernatorial, we expect the same.

And after this election, we're definitely going to look at how we can even enhance and improve it for the 2024 presidential election cycle.

- So, your section supervisor and your team lead will fill this document out, but all inspectors must sign this document at the end of the night.

- The way the absentee board works, there's no position at the absentee counting board that really involves discretion.

The entire process of the absentee counting board now is a very singular assembly line task, where it's very tough to really impact or throw a wrench into the socket.

And if there is a problem, it's very easy to remove and have an alternate replaced.

- I like to add something.

I think that the reason why, after the 2020 presidential election, nobody quit in Detroit at the Department of Elections, is because, over the years, we get beat up a lot, (laughing) we get beat up a lot, and it's a thankless job.

And I think that what it did for us, it built thick skin.

Around the country, they probably never experienced that before.

We've had protests in front of the Department of Elections, the clerk, so it was almost like, par for the course.

But in Detroit, we have to deal with that a lot.

- Clara Hendrickson, you did the original reporting on the training session we just saw.

What was most interesting to you about all of that?

- So I, this is my first time going to an election worker training.

And I think the thing that really stood out to me, I went in kind of expecting it to be similar to the kinds of trainings I take at work, where there's a PowerPoint presentation, a manual that you're flipping through, but this was basically a mock election.

You have a dress rehearsal before the big show, right?

And that's the case when it comes to elections as well.

So everything was set up just as it would be at the counting board in Detroit where they're going to process absentee ballots.

And you have to figure out what you're going to do with different scenarios, like, what if a ballot envelope arrives, and there are two ballots in the envelope, or what if it's a ballot from a previous election, not the election that's underway now.

So it's fun to see election workers handle and practice those sorts of things in real life.

- And also, we heard in the story about this out of balance, it seems that that's really easy to have happen.

- Sure, I mean, election workers are dealing with a large volume of ballots.

They're working very long hours, and clerical mistakes happen.

It's sort of part of the process, but these aren't election altering mistakes.

- Emily, you were looking at that too.

Absentee ballots, a big thing going on, again.

- Yeah, I think if more people got a window into this, and I think they will, through this piece, they'll understand that this is a really complicated process with a lot of pieces and parts that are moving and it's really easy, I think we saw during the the 2020 TCF Center incident that we spent a lot of time on, it's really easy for people to look at that and say, "Oh, that's unusual," when really it's pretty standard election process, and something that maybe reporters and definitely election workers and election officials have been used to for a long time.

- And that TCF thing was such a big story nationally, but as you say, people looking through the window, not being able to look through the window.

But now, as we heard from Daniel Baxter with the elections group, there are more Republicans getting involved with all of that.

What are you hearing?

- Yes, that's part of a national Republican strategy.

I was at a conference where a Republican National Committee official talked about recruiting more election watchers, making sure they're better trained.

It's part of a strategy to try to ensure that if they file challenges, legal challenges in the next election, they'll be more successful than they were in 2020, when virtually all of them were tossed out as being without merit.

- Well, is that a good thing?

It must be, people getting involved.

- It's certainly good if the people acting as challengers and inspectors have better information about the process.

I think what remains to be seen, Bill, and we'll have to see what happens after the election, is whether whether any legal challenges that come out of this election are more merit-based and fact-based than the ones we saw in 2020.

- Well, another part of all this is the voting machines themselves.

Clara, you gotta get a look at that too.

Tell me about how that process works, that you can actually watch voting machines.

- Right, so, in every municipality across the state of Michigan, clerks have a public accuracy test where they demonstrate that the machine has been tested and it's ready to count ballots accurately, to ensure that the outcomes you get are a correct read of the ballots.

- And we gotta look at that in Taylor, this summer.

(crowd conversing) - [Election Worker] We voted over the weekend.

We were like, Carol voted for the first time.

- Pursuant to state law, we are required to test the voting equipment.

So every election cycle, we test every machine that we use.

- All right, it's 5:30. we're gonna go ahead and plug the machine in.

This is the tabulator that we use on Election Day.

It's called an ICP, an ImageCast Precinct.

- That process is lengthy.

Each tabulator that goes out to the precinct is tested, as well as the absentee equipment, and then handicap equipment that also goes out to the precincts.

- [Questioner] Do all the municipalities use the same machines, or?

- In Wayne County.

- Yeah, in Wayne County.

And for the majority of Michigan, there are very few counties that have either Hart or ES&S, actually, is there only one that has ES&S?

So it's the majority Dominion, some Hart.

And then ES&S is the other vendor as well.

- [Questioner] And which are these?

- These are Dominion, we've been using these since 2017.

So they have been with us for a while.

- In my 10 years, in 2013, we did have a candidate attend who obviously was a resident, a voter as well.

But in 2016, we had one resident who attended the public accuracy test.

- There are memory cards in here, there's a seal number on the seals, and they're recorded.

They're recorded in our office, they're recorded on the poll book.

So on Election Day, the workers do have to check them to make sure everything matches, and that nothing was tampered with.

There is also a seal on the modem door.

We no longer modem, but there is still a seal to show that it's locked and nobody's gotten into it.

- [Clara] And why do you think very few people come to to view this accuracy test?

- They may not be aware that it happens, but we do post the notice of the test in the local paper, it's posted at the bulletin board outside of City Hall.

This time we stressed that it was happening.

We announced it several times during council meetings, so I don't know if that helped people attend.

So I think it's just the fact that voters are not aware that this does happen.

I mean that is why they do not attend.

But in order to understand the process, I think it is important for people to attend things like this.

- These are test ballots, so we have to run through every scenario that might happen on Election Day, to make sure that the machine is reading it correctly.

So there are 84 ballots in here, and the first 10 are various scenarios that I'll walk through, as we insert them in the machine.

- [Clara] I have a ballot, I'm a voter.

How does that vote transform into a certified election result?

- So when you cast your vote, at the end of the night, once everyone is done voting, the machine has memory cards.

Memory cards come back to my office, they are read into a machine, and those are transmitted to the County.

Those results are verified by the County Board of Canvassers and then certified, so once you put that vote in the machine, everything is tabulated.

The end of the night, the results come out, they're unofficial until everything is taken downtown, being that memory card, tapes that come from the machine, everything is gone through, made sure everything is accurate, and then those results are published, and those are the certified results, once they're certified by the County Board of Canvassers.

- The next ballot is a stray mark test.

So if you are working on your ballot and you make a swipe of your pen, we wanna make sure it's not counting it as a vote, if you make a mark in any of these open areas.

So you'll see here that there are lines near the voting areas, but not in them.

We wanna make sure that they're not counting them as a vote.

So when I put this through, it's gonna say "Warning: blank ballot detected."

And that's correct, because we didn't actually vote for anything.

(machine beeping) And it is, it's saying, "Warning, there is a blank ballot," and again, that voter can have it spit back out and try again.

Or they can hit Cast, because it is their right to vote a blank ballot if they choose so.

- Okay, what happens, because this has happened to me a couple times, where the machine did not take my ballot, and the poll worker kept saying, "Well, put it back in, put it back in."

What is happening there?

- So if you had a jam, so if you put a ballot in, and I'm gonna try to recreate it with this one, to see if I can get it to do it.

If you put it in at like a weird angle, it might spit it back out and say there was a jam, because it has to read it going flat in.

- Okay, are all the ballots the same, because the top of ours, in our precinct, they tear that off?

- Yep.

- Okay.

- So, the stub is not on here, when we do these test ballots, we have stubs as well, and they'll say Test, and we rip 'em off before they go through the machine.

- [Questioner] Okay.

- So if you look closely, there is that perforation on there, - Okay.

- [Tester] Where we rip them off.

- So again, what's happening when my ballot has to be?

- It could just be that you put it in in a little bit of an angle, or you kind of jerked it a little bit, and that's the machine just saying, "Hey, pull it out, might be a jam.

"We might have read it wrong."

You pull it out, and then you just put it in straight.

- [Clara] In the 2020 election, there were a lot of conspiracy theories about the voting machines, particularly about the Dominion voting machines, which are the ones that are used in Wayne County and many counties in Michigan.

How has that affected your work as a clerk?

Are you receiving calls from voters who have concerns about the machines?

How do you address that?

- We did receive a lot of concerns in 2020, especially after the election.

We received multiple phone calls from individuals.

Usually, the day after election, it goes from chaos to just complete crickets around our office, and we were still receiving calls all the way through December, asking questions, which, a voter has every right to do.

They have every right to understand the process, but they also have to understand these machines have been in use since 2017.

- It also will never take the incorrect precinct.

So if somebody votes at Precinct 2, and they try to put their ballot in Precinct 3's tabulator, it's gonna always reject it.

It's never going to give you the option to cast.

It's gonna constantly spit it out.

- [Clara] Throughout Michigan, and the country, election officials like yourself have reported an increase in threats.

Have you been on the receiving end of any threats from folks?

- Not personally.

We did receive a lot of hate mail in 2020, when the Secretary of State sent out applications for absentee ballots to every registered voter due to Covid, and we did receive a lot of them returned with foul language, things directed at us, where we didn't send the applications out, and telling us who they're voting for and they wanna vote in person, okay.

You know what I mean?

So nothing personally, thank God.

But I do worry, I worry about my staff, I worry about my workers out at the precincts.

I worry about my family, seeing the other election officials, their families getting threats and everything.

- All right, so, once the last voter has voted, so if somebody is in line by eight o'clock, they do still have the right to vote.

Doesn't matter how long we have to stay there until they do it.

Once they are done, that ballot goes through the machine.

They then verify that everything balances.

So they will look to see, if we issued 83 ballots, that this screen says 83 ballots.

And then they will proceed with closing the polls.

And it asks, "Are you sure?"

(machine beeps) They'll say "Yes," and then it will close the polls for them.

Once it does that, the results will start printing.

(machine hums and beeps) - [Clara] Do you have any observations that misinformation about the election process has maybe deterred people in Taylor from voting, because they don't think their vote's gonna count?

- We've had a few who have canceled their registrations.

We've had a few that have gone from voting absentee to, "I don't trust that process, I wanna vote in person," which they have every right to do.

So they wanted to be removed off of the permanent absentee list, which, I get that, but it's not been a huge amount.

But there's been a few, and that's disheartening, because I want people to vote.

- This is, I assume, your first time attending a public accuracy test?

- Yes.

Does seeing how the process work, does it make you feel more confident that the election is gonna be secure, and that the machine's gonna count the votes accurately?

(crowd conversing) - I feel that they're doing everything that they can, but up the chain, down the chain, whatever, where it goes, do I feel that, no, I don't feel confident.

- What are your reservations?

- I just feel that there's a lot of people out there that know a lot more about this situation and that there can be some funny business.

I don't trust it, no, and I am concerned, yeah.

- Can you just spell out a little bit more explicitly, where in the process you think that-- - I don't know, because I don't know those processes.

- We are being watched, there are steps involved, there are Board of Canvassers that certify the results, (sighing) there's steps in place where we're all held to a certain standard, and individuals need to trust that, trust that process, because it's there for a reason and it's worked for years before all of this.

Some people, you'll never change their mind, because unfortunately, we live in a society, and this is just not from 2020, this is my prior experience, prior to 2020, people can't accept loss, and when they lose, they automatically go to, "The other side cheated."

- Here, we are going to start to look at the tape, and I'm just gonna show you guys.

So the results were zero when we started, and they will check that, and they will have signed down at the bottom.

There are signature spots, so they would've signed that to say they verified it.

- Can the public view that printout tape, to see who signed it and verified it?

(paper rustling) - In theory, well, no, the poll watchers aren't near the machines, so that's a question I'd wanna ask the County about.

That's why we have bipartisan election inspectors, because they check it, so there's a balance of Democrats and Republicans, or as much as we can get a balance, and they're the ones checking it.

The County also checks it, to make sure, you could FOIA them for sure, afterward.

But on Election Day, I don't know about you touching the actual stuff, if that makes sense.

- [Questioner] Oh yeah.

So don't go up to it and start pulling on the receipt, they're gonna stop you.

(audience laughing) - Tampering with an election machine is illegal.

So we are prepared for that.

If they touch the machine, the authorities will be called, We will, I will not tolerate anything.

And that will be relayed to the workers.

These machines, the voter is to vote, if they have to, push the button to accept or reject, or send their ballot back out, if they make a mistake.

That is the only time they should be touching the equipment.

If anyone tries to unplug a machine, they have a battery back up, so it's not going to, it's gonna run on battery back up until we plug it back in.

Or if there's say, a power outage, we'll get them a generator, or whatever we have to do.

But we're prepared; that has been discussed with my staff, and I know that there's been talk in the news media about a candidate telling people, if you see things wrong, unplug a machine.

I'm gonna tell you right now, if you see things wrong, do not unplug the machine.

Contact the clerk's office, and we will take care of it.

So my plan is, on Election Day, if we hear of anything, is to dispatch the police right out.

I'm not even gonna put my election workers in a situation where, they're gonna tell the person to back away, but they're not gonna confront the person.

We'll let the police do that.

We follow the laws.

I'm a rule follower, 100%.

- The Free Press has been talking with a lot of municipal clerks.

Emily Lawler, you got to talk with Tina Barton, an election consultant.

Tell us about that.

- So Tina's a really respected voice in Michigan elections.

She served for a long time as the Rochester Hills city clerk and she really played a big role in dispelling some of the misunderstandings and misinformation, frankly, after the 2020 election.

She's a consultant now.

She still works with a lot of clerks, and I spent a little bit of time catching up with her last week.

More and more people are voting absentee in Michigan.

We had a law change in 2018 that ushered in no reason absentee.

What should people know about the process, which starts with not an absentee ballot, but an absentee ballot application.

- That's correct, and so we did see that, in 2018 with that passage, that with the no reason absentee.

The other thing that we saw in 2020 was that a lot of people chose to vote absentee because obviously, they had concerns about being in person at the polls.

So, we saw these permanent absentee lists, which clerks have, grow tremendously.

Some of us saw it double, even triple in size of the number of people who said, from now on, for every election cycle, I would like for you to send me an absentee application.

So know that in Michigan, no one is automatically sent a ballot.

They have to apply for the ballot, return the application, fill it out, send it back to the local clerk.

The local clerk is then also not only checking signatures on absentee ballots, we're also checking signatures on applications to make sure that you are the person who is applying for that absentee ballot.

So it goes through multiple purity tests.

And the very first one is when the application is received, that we're looking at that signature saying, is this the person, does that match their signature?

We wanna make sure it's that individual.

- And one thing that I think people should be aware of too, is that the absentee ballot application doesn't necessarily have to come from your clerk.

You might get approached at a neighborhood barbecue, or some other venue, with people who have absentee ballot applications, and that's all right, right?

- It is all right.

It's a point of confusion, that I will tell you, for voters, because if they are on our permanent AV list, the absentee voter list, if they're on that list, the local clerk is sending them out prior to Election Day, and so we're a state that allows us to put more than one election on there.

So for instance, you might have returned your application saying, "Please send me an absentee ballot "for the August primary and for the November general."

And so that application can work for both.

So it's called a dual application.

Some clerks use those, some clerks don't.

So, but you also have political parties, candidates, interest groups, who will send out applications for absentee ballots.

This can get confusing, because they tend to mimic or mirror the look of the official one from the clerk's office, and so, as a clerk, I took many phone calls from people calling, saying, "Why are you sending me another application?

"I've already voted my absentee ballot."

It's not necessarily coming from your local election official.

If you think that's the case, please do contact them.

But most likely, it's coming from some third party interest group or campaign that's trying to make sure that you're actually getting out to vote.

And so they're sending out those generously and liberally.

- There was some controversy last cycle, over ballot drop boxes.

Can you explain just the security, the different ways to get your ballot back?

Obviously you could mail it, you could bring it to a box, a drop box, you could bring it to a clerk's office.

Are all those options valid ones?

- Those are all valid options, certainly.

So think of a ballot drop box as the time when we all used to actually send things through the mail.

Our communities used to have boxes from the United States Postal Service there that we could go put our mail in, drop it off, and someone would come pick it up, right?

And the mailman would take it and it would make its route.

It's kind of a similar concept.

Most communities have some sort of a drop box at their either township or city hall, where you can do that, drop your ballot off.

At this point, we're getting very close to Election Day.

I would caution people on putting their ballot in the mail and putting that through the postal service, because of the tight timelines that we're under.

I would encourage them to either use the local drop box in their community, or to just bring that back directly to their local clerk, and make sure that they have that.

And they can also follow up with that on the Secretary of State's website.

You can go out there, put a little bit of your personal information in on the Michigan Voter Information Center, and you can see if your clerk has received your ballot.

So you will know that the clerk actually has it, and that they've already checked your signature.

- And when your absentee ballot comes in, as long as it's before 8:00 p.m. on Election Day, so just as if you were voting or in line to vote in person, then we start counting those ballots?

Except that the legislature did give clerks a little bit of grace this year for pre-processing.

- Right, pre-processing and tabulation are not the same thing.

So what the legislature allowed them to do is, two days prior to Election Day, they're allowed to pre-process.

So basically, what they're allowed to do at that time is, take the absentee ballot.

There are two envelopes there.

You have the outer envelope, that the ballot has your signature on, and that the ballot gets mailed in.

On the inside of that envelope is another envelope, and it's called a secrecy sleeve envelope.

And that is where the ballot is in.

At that time, what they're allowed to do, is to take that ballot outta there, match up the numbers to make sure, on the label of the absentee ballot, if it says that I issued you ballot number 100, that when I open that up, that the stub on that ballot says ballot number 100.

So the separation can occur at that time, but they cannot go beyond removing the ballot out of the secrecy sleeve.

So it has to stay in there until Election Day.

Once the precincts open on Election Day, they can start processing absentee ballots.

And one of the things I wanna point out, that I hope voters understand, is every process that we do in the elections world, everything that we're doing on Election Day, whether it's here or in another state, every process is verified by a Republican and a Democrat.

And there aren't many things or ways or situations in this country where Republicans and Democrats come together and are willing to work together on something or see eye to eye, and that's what I love about elections, is that every election cycle, we have a Republican and a Democrat, multiple of them at precincts, working together to make sure that our democratic processes work smoothly on Election Day.

And so that same thing is happening in the absentee room.

There is a mix of Republicans and Democrats in the absentee counting board room.

- When do you think we should expect results to be available?

- I think it's very possible, especially given, again, the absentee numbers that we're seeing, I think there are a lot of things driving this ballot.

There are very competitive races on this ballot.

You have constitutional amendments, very important things that are proposals that are on this ballot.

So I'm expecting you're going to see record turnouts, for a gubernatorial election cycle.

So that's going to push times back.

If you are an early-to-bed person, I would say you should not have any expectation that you will know who won until you wake up the next morning.

And I think those results will all come in during the night.

And certainly, those communities that are larger, like the Grand Rapids, the Detroits, are possibly even going to push into the morning, and maybe even into the next day.

I'm not sure what their load is, for how many ballots they're gonna get in, or how many workers that they have to accomplish that.

What I will say, is I strongly encourage all of those who are considering being a poll watcher or pole challenger, if you really want to make an impact and you want to be engaged in the process, be an inspector, be a worker.

Clerks are always looking for election workers and election inspectors.

They need them, there are times when we run short on them.

And so if you want to be engaged, know the nuts and bolts, go through the training, see how it all works.

The best thing that you can do is to be an election worker.

And I'd highly encourage people to do that.

- Emily, one of the things that came up that isn't in the piece here, is the immense pressure that clerks are under.

- Yeah, certainly, these are really important positions, but they're often sort of administrative, and also sometimes under-resourced, especially in some of our smaller communities, we see local clerks heading up pretty big logistical challenges.

And it can be a challenging environment, especially when that position has come under so much scrutiny, and you can face some really big political headwinds in what's essentially a nonpartisan administrative position.

- Well, let's turn our attention to the people who really count in all this: the people who cast their ballots, the voters.

Free Press Lansing Bureau Chief, Paul Egan, you've been talking to some of them.

What are you hearing?

- Well, one of the things we found, not surprisingly, Bill, is your partisan leanings, who you're going to vote for, will often correlate with how you vote.

- Well, let's take a look at what you found.

- So President Trump's made a lot of claims about the 2020 presidential election, that there was a lot of fraud, and that it was stolen from him.

How do you feel about all those claims?

- Well, if the claims are investigated, which they say they are, there's not really much one can do about that, either way.

So what's already done is done.

(laughing) There's no need to keep drudging it back up.

It's not gonna do anybody any good.

It's a waste of taxpayer money and time.

- Do you feel confident though, that when you cost your ballot, that it's going to be accurately counted, and that your vote will really count, like it should?

- Let's hope, because there has been some accusations of that in the past, that somebody will be overseeing that, that needs to be, this time, much more than last time.

Let's hope there's a little more checks and balances going on and it'll be a little more transparent than it was to begin with.

- Do you think that voting absentee or through the mail is any more or less secure than voting in person at the polls?

- Depends on really what your view is.

If you don't have an opportunity to go to the polls, then absentee, I guess, is better than not voting.

- I've been voting absentee.

It started because I just wasn't gonna be able to go to the poll on that that particular day.

And so, I started getting the absentee ballots.

It's so much easier, it's so much easier.

I don't have to stand in line.

When we had the Obama election, I stood in line for hours.

- Having come from Chicago, the adage of a vote early and vote often was, 40 years ago, 50 years ago, Mayor Daley ran Chicago.

And that was sort of a chuckle chuckle, but there was more to it than that really stated.

I think we've kind of degraded the whole voting process by extending the amount of time that you can vote.

It's hard to think that, even though the population of the United States was probably, now we're 300 million, might have been 200 million 50 years ago, but how is it that without computerization we could count ballots, and by midnight, or very early into the next morning, we'd have winners decided and everybody voted on one day?

Now, a substantial number of people will vote absentee.

It's not that I disagree with absentee voting, to be used in the right way.

You have offshore military, people are infirm and sick and those kinds of situations, but any time that you're gonna take ballots over an extended period of time, it just makes me a tad concerned about the effectiveness and the legitimacy of those kinds of votes being cast.

- So do you trust the system?

- I trust it, hopefully now more than I did before, because hopefully, there will be some more overseeing because of what's happened.

- It sounds like, and I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but you feel that if somebody is able-bodied, it's kind of a civic duty to show up at the polls and vote?

- I 100% agree with that.

My wife and I will do that, even when I was working.

I'd take time from work, and we'd just go get in line, either early or late, and you can see your fellow neighbors in there and it's an opportunity to catch up.

Not so much about politically what did you do, but to be seen at the voting booth, rather than dropping an envelope in the mail, and really wondering, where'd it really go?

And is my vote truly gonna be counted in that situation?

- In my opinion, I think they want certain areas, and by certain areas we mean Democrats, basically, want you to, especially in the urban areas, go stand in line, stand in line for hours and hours at a time.

- How do you expect you'll cost your vote in November?

- I'll probably vote absentee this year, more than likely.

- And why?

- Probably because of time constraints, and it just depends on the Covid situation, as well, as far as exposure and time with polls.

- Paul, you've got some really insightful people that opened up to you about the vote.

It can be hard to get people to talk, especially with cameras pointing at them.

What else did you see with all this?

I think some of it was really related to coming out of this pandemic.

- Yeah, we're still seeing the effects of the pandemic.

For example, the independent voter we spoke to, Julie Gavigan, said she's probably gonna vote absentee because she works with some people that have health issues and she's still concerned about health safety at the polls.

- And then, Clara, we see that, I think people are just more aware of the process now, or suddenly they've become aware, with all these things going on.

- Sure, I mean there are definitely many folks who continue to spread misinformation that's been debunked, but there are also plenty of people who want to understand the nuts and bolts of how elections work.

How, as I describe it, ballots get processed, to, in a series of high stakes paperwork, transform into election outcomes, and what happens after Election Day when we have unofficial results, how those become certified official results.

- Emily, what do you think about that?

- Yeah, I think that the more people understand, as Clara said, the nuts and bolts, the closer we get to an electorate that has confidence in the votes that they cast.

And I think, at the end of the day, that's one of our biggest goals.

- Confidence in the election.

So when people pick up that black or blue pen to cast their votes, for some, that's the easy part.

The ballots themselves, how easy are they to use?

How easy to read, to understand?

Let's talk more about that.

A problem nationwide, a lack of ballot understanding, and disenfranchised voters.

One Detroit's Will Glover talked to reporters from ProPublica who looked into this.

- Were you surprised at all, that this is where reporting on a confusing voting system took you?

Or, was this the target?

- Do you know, it impacts 20% of the population who really struggle with reading, and don't necessarily have the wide range of foundational abilities to help them get a driver's license, help them at the voting booth.

- You know our nation's history, obviously there were literacy tests up to 1965, that prevented certain people from being able to vote.

And we wanted to see, okay, what are the current challenges in the voting process?

- Literacy's one thing, but how a ballot's presented can affect elections.

In one Florida County, a researcher found ballot design led to 25,000 votes not being cast in a senate race, in which the winner, Rick Scott, won by just 10,000.

- She, in her research, saw people, instead of reading the ballot from column to column, they would try and read it all the way across.

When you don't have clear markings showing people how to read a ballot, even that can result in people voting for someone they don't wanna vote for, or incorrectly filling out the ballot and potentially risking having their vote thrown out altogether.

- Comprehension and clarity.

One Detroit contributors Stephen Henderson and Nolan Finley give us more to think about.

- Just.

- So, is it too hard to vote in this country?

- Well, I think for most people, it's not.

I think most of us are used to the systems and the processes.

There's been a lot of changes and different procedures put in place.

But I think for the most part, most of us can go in and figure out how to make the circle or draw the line or whatever it is, and file the ballot, but I think there is a group of people out there for whom it's not so easy, and we should be paying attention to making it simpler for them.

The ProPublica piece talks about people who can't read, so if you can't read, should you not be allowed to vote?

And should you not get some sort of assistance?

Would an audio ballot, - [Stephen] Right.

- Where you just answered yes or no, would that work?

I don't think we should be adverse to figuring out new ways and better ways to do it.

I worry about the ballot being so long, and that people won't flip it over to vote on the races on the back.

And I also think understanding the proposals as they're written on the ballot is just sometimes a difficult process.

And you're not always voting for what you think.

- And people are trying to trick you sometimes, on the ballot proposals.

I think there's a real tension here between the kinds of technologies that are being created that make everything else in our lives easier, and the fear that those technologies, if you applied them to the voting space, would be taken advantage of, and that you'd end up with compromised elections.

But if you think about it, the easiest way to vote would, at this point be to do it the same way you do everything else, is on your phone.

I mean, I do everything of importance on this phone.

I pay bills, I buy things, I file my taxes, I move money around between banks and institutions.

And I never blink an eye at the idea that oh, it's dangerous.

- But you are taking a risk.

- [Stephen] You are taking a risk.

- And so, are we willing to take a risk with our elections and our vote?

You know that as soon as a electronic voting system is put in place, there'll be someone out there trying to hack it, and you know we've all had our credit cards compromised, and we've all gotten notices from banks or financial institutions or retailers who say, "Oh, your information has been obtained-- - [Stephen] Compromised, yeah.

- Through a hack or whatever.

Do you want your voting information put at risk in that way, that somebody-- - But is that more vulnerable than your Social Security?

I mean seriously, I put my Social Security number into stuff on the phone when it asks me to do it.

- [Nolan] I don't do that.

- I put bank account numbers and all other kinds of things because that's the way the world works.

And if you think about it, all of these hurdles that we're talking about, you could clear pretty easily, if you could develop technology on the phone, on the computer, or someplace else.

Audio voting, explanatory voting, participatory voting, like walking someone through the process, it'd be a lot easier.

- It'd be a lot easier, but you do have to pay attention to security, because with an election, the first time we had an election that got hacked-- - People would lose their minds.

- People would lose confidence, and we already have a serious confidence deficit in our elections.

So I'm not sure that precludes us from trying to get to a point where we can do things to help people vote who have a difficult time, though.

For most of us it's, it's simple.

If it's not simple, then you get disenfranchised from your democratic rights.

- We also don't do a great job, in this country, of voter education.

How do most people learn to vote?

They either learn from their parents, that's how I learned.

Or they just show up, and decide they're gonna do it, and they gotta figure their own way through it.

There isn't a whole lot of introduction, civic introduction to the idea of voting.

What does that mean, what does that look like?

We also need to make this all a lot easier and more accessible to more people.

I mean, the idea that Election Day is a weekday instead of a weekend.

- Do you think a Saturday election, or a Sunday election, would draw a larger turnout?

- Oh I think it would.

- I'm busy on those days, those are my fun days.

- (laughing) That's when I'm doing something I wanna do.

I think it would, or if there were a holiday, right?

If it were, you don't have to go to work today, 'cause it's Election Day.

Other countries that do that have seen much higher participation than we do.

- But we have been increasing participation.

- It's gone up.

- In recent elections.

And I think that has everything to do with the passion that has surrounded recent elections.

When people care about what's going on?

- Then more people come.

- They vote.

When they don't, nothing you can do is gonna get 'em to the polls.

But I do think there's steps we ought to be taking.

- Yeah, we're moving, not fast enough.

- You don't want anybody to say, "I couldn't vote."

- Yeah.

- The election, there's so much talk these days about misinformation.

How new is that?

- Pretty new, I think, we've seen it at unprecedented levels in the 2020 election.

You think about things like, questioning exactly what time absentee ballots arrive at a counting board, I just don't think that people have been engaged in that part of the process before.

And of course, it's been used to paint something, a picture of something nefarious happening, when it's a part of the regular process.

And I think that's a misunderstanding that led to misinformation and some disinformation, about the results of the election.

- Yeah, I think the fact that 2020 set a new normal, and folks who doubt the legitimacy of that year's election are now participating in it in new ways and wanna be involved, but election officials have also stepped up their efforts to counter misinformation and make sure that people have confidence in the results.

- And misinformation has always been around, but social media has taken it to a whole new level, in terms of how quickly it can spread.

- Well that's all the time we have to talk about this.

Hopefully we're spreading some good information.

For Emily Lawler, Clara Hendrickson, Paul Egan with the Detroit Free Press Political Team, I'm Bill Kubota with One Detroit.

Happy voting if you haven't yet, and if you already have, thanks for that.

And thanks for watching.

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