You said, When are the results official? Correct? Yes, yes. So I can tell you, for Oakland County, it will take us the full two weeks. So they will say, on my website, will say unofficial results, and it will be two weeks until it says official results. We have two weeks to complete the canvas of the election with a recent change in Michigan, it it can most likely not take less than a week, because now our military and overseas voters ballot can still be counted if they are received after election day, as long six days after election day, as long as they are postmarked by election day. So if we're getting ballots and so they're brought in on that seventh day, so we might be adding more votes to the unofficial results, because we'll be because military and overseas voters ballots will be added to the count, as well as if somebody returns an absentee ballot. And the terminology we use is if they need to cure their ballot, which really is not the ballots the envelope, if the signature didn't match what's on the local clerk's records or the signature is missing. So hopefully, you know that Michigan, we are decentralized in how our elections are run. We're different than 46 other states. Okay, good. So, so the locals, our city and township clerks have to contact voters if there's an issue, and so people now have three days after the election to also cure their absentee ballots. So so our results, you know, we'll probably be adding some votes to the count for those ballots that come in after
and that curing is for absentee ballots. That's not for for ballots that are cast in person on election day or or early in person, right? Because
we don't know. So remember whether there's privacy of your ballot. So once your ballot has been, you know, put through a tabulator. I don't I couldn't find my ballot from your ballot, right? So there's no hearing of the ballot. And this, I don't like to say it's not curing of the ballot. It's the envelope. So you know, if you're if you return the FC ballot and the signature is missing, you know it's not going to be counted. So the clerk needs to contact the voter to try and get that signature, and then that ballot would then be counted. But, I mean, we don't assuming there's a ballot in the envelope, right? But I'm just saying it's still sealed. It's the envelope is still so
the and that the
envelope, I guess I should say, right? I mean, it's curing the envelope, and
that all has to occur within the two weeks of the canvas that
has. They happen within three days of the election, okay?
And then the you mentioned the military ballots, it's six days, but they must be postmarked on by election
day, by the Election Day,
and use paper ballots, and then those are fed into a tabulator, if I'm understanding it, right.
Yeah. So okay, so we now have three ways kind of to vote in Michigan. We have Election Day precincts, we have nine, nine days of early voting, and we also have absentee voting, yes. So some count absentee ballots on a high speed tabulator. But yes, it's still a tabulator. So yes, it's optical scan with our paper ballots. Yep.
So the tabulator is just the word you use for the machine that counts the paper ballots. Yes, okay, and that is done at the precinct level.
Well, so it depends on which, which kind of ballots we're talking about. What kind of voting are we talking about? So, yeah, election day is at the precinct, early voting. It depends on, honestly the county, so we just that just was passed in a ballot proposal and 22 to allow for early voting in Michigan and the city and township clerks can run early voting themselves. They could partner with another city or township clerk and collaborate on it, or if the county clerk offers they can collaborate with the county clerk. So I offered that to to my local clerks. We have 52 cities and townships in Oakland County. We have more municipalities than any other county in the state. And yeah, lucky me, no. So 45 of the 52 said, Yes, we'd like to collaborate. We'd like you to do it, Lisa, so we have regional sites, so we have put communities together, and then we also have a central site, a secondary site for those communities that they could also early vote at. Some counties have one site for their whole county or four sites for their whole county. And some counties, it's every municipality is doing it by themselves, so but it's, but early voting is not at the precinct level, at a minimum, it's at the municipal level, but it could be as big as a county level. Just to keep it confusing for you, I
know I get the concept. So it's, I'm from Indiana. I'm here in Michigan, reporting a lot these days, and it's similar there. I I'm lucky I can go to the same spot for early voting as I would for my precinct. However, okay, that's not the same for most people. It's their regional sites, and then what? What happens to those ballots? Like if I go in eight days before the election and I cast my ballot, is it tabulated right that day? Or are those stories
for early voting? Yeah, for early voting. You are early voting. You are putting the ballot in the tabulator yourself. That is, that is the beauty of early voting. And why I say that is because, if in November, so, you know, we have different rules for every election, but in November, let's say, you know, we have a lot of races that say vote for no more than two. If you vote for three and you put in the tabulator, it's gonna, it's gonna eject your ballot, and it's going to tell you, at least on our equipment, it tells you, right there on the screen, what you you know you you made too many choices in such and such race. And then you have the option to either say, accept my ballot as is, which means none of those three votes would count if you voted for three instead of two, so no votes in just that race, or you take your ballot back, you go back to the workers. Say, I you know, I need a new please spoil my ballot. I need a new ballot, right? So that's the beauty of early voting as opposed to or voting on Election Day as opposed to absentee voting. And voters in Michigan can bring their absentee ballot to their early voting site or to their precinct on election day, and put their absentee ballot in through the tabulator as well, just to have that assurance that their ballot is counted. And, like I said, they don't have any errors on it. But so the third way, so we didn't talk about is that absentee ballot. So again, there was a law passed. This one was passed in 20 that if the county offered, municipal clerks can contract with the county clerk for the county to count their absentee ballots. And again, I offered, and so I'm the only county clerk who tabulates for multiple communities. So we count for, I think 18 or 20. I think it's 18. We've been saying 20, but I think it's 18 actually, of our of our local clerks, of our municipalities absentee ballots, the ballots that they get up until Monday, 4pm so we have a county combined absentee voting counting board, but But besides that, for like, basically everybody else is by the municipality, their absentee voting counting board, so the absentee ballots aren't some that are smaller jurisdictions. They just bring their ballots, their absentee ballots, to the precinct and put them in the tabulator. Okay?
So
we have, like, very small, like very small, like just a couple 100 people, and so they, you know, they don't need a whole absentee voting Accounting Board. They just bring them to the precinct and they put them in the workers put them in
the tabulator. But you've got good sized municipalities here, and they're going to have a lot of absentee ballots, and they're coming to you, or many of them are. So they bring their absentee ballots to your central location for county, for tabulating everything,
all the ballots that they get up until Monday, 4pm anything after 4pm they are tabulating. They're either taking them out to the precinct on election day, or they're having a mini AV county absentee voting county board.
One thing I've sort of always wondered about, because I voted absentee a couple of times too, and never really thought about it till we start having all these brouhahas about elections. But where do those absentee ballots go? Are they stored in the clerk's office? Or they like, if I drop my ballot into a ballot drop box, then what happens to it? That absentee ballot?
Yeah, that's, and again. I mean, that's, that's a local clerk question, really. But yes, they're kept so once a local clerk receives an absentee ballot, it is time stamped. It is, I mean, these are present. It is checked into the qualified voter file. So that's our database to say, Oh yes, Sue Smith, she returned her absentee ballot. You know, that sort of thing. And, making and they're checking the signature on there. That signature is also a digital image of their signatures in the qualified voter file. So when they're pulling that up, they're checking the signature on the outer envelope. And then they are, you know, going to sort them by precinct and and keep them, you know, sealed and everything, until they start processing their absentee ballots. A new another we have a lot of new laws lately. Another one is now we can process absentee ballots starting eight days. Yeah. Before, yeah, I
saw that. So, yeah. So they can be like, if you're in a municipality or a township that has a lot of absentee ballots a higher population, you can actually start tabulating. You can run them through the tabulator several days ahead of time, but then you can't report or print. Am I correct in thinking that it's just Let's got to be saying
anything about any results, even if it's like, you know you're doing it five days before, and you walk out and you say, oh, you know Joe Jones looks like he's winning. That's a felony. So you can't, you cannot, you cannot speak of anything that you see while you're tabulating the results, but no results can be released until whether it's early voting or an absentee voting counting board, which they're usually not done at 8pm but no results can be released before the polls close on election day.
Now the close yeah, the absentee ballots, they might have been fed in the tabulator right on site. Maybe they went to your central location, the early votes, they've already been tabulated.
Yes, they've been tabulated, but, but the machines are set to are in suspend mode until 8pm basically, or 730 so then we have workers go and have to, you know, turn back on and close the polls and do everything to then print the tapes and everything, yes, and then
you they Run the printout from the tabulator. Now, the the precinct or municipality like that, the most local level, I'm sure they must do some sort of a canvas or a, you know, an audit to make sure that, hey, these totals we're getting from the tabulator match, you know, the number of people who came through the door that kind of thing.
Yeah, they have a, what's called a receiving board, but Yes, yep, okay, there's supposed to be checking everything as it's, you know, at the clerk's office or wherever they're set up when, when precinct information is coming into them to make sure everything was, you know, hopefully done correctly. So
they've got the printout, they've got the actual ballots in hand, right? Or those stay inside the machine, or
ballots are sealed in a container and the seal number. So the seal is sort of like a zip tie, but it has a unique number on it, and so the number that is on that seal is written in the poll book, and a Democrat and a Republican have to sign off on that,
and then they They do their their their Canvas, or their their receiving process, they've sealed the ballots, they've got the the printout. And then where does that go? From the precinct level? Does that go directly to you or to the township?
There's actually three, three tapes that are printed out, and they are put into three different envelopes. And there's other things put in the envelopes as well, two pages from the poll book, and one envelope is addressed to the county, one is addressed to the chief probate judge, and one is for the local clerk. So there's an envelope for every precinct, every election day precinct, and then there's envelopes from their absentee ballot. And it depends on how they tabulate them as to whether one per precinct or if they, you know, put a bunch of precinct together in an envelope, and then we have them for the early voting as well. So, but how results get to the county clerk differs, honestly, differs between counties, because we have, for one reason, we have three different vendors of voting equipment, and only one vendor has the capability and the certification to modem results. And so different counties are doing different things. My neighbor in Macomb County requires that their local clerks don't bring them any results until they have every single thing in hand. So the results tend to take a little longer to be pushed out, because, you know, they're waiting on everything. So it's a mix of how, how counties are getting their results from their local clerks, but in addition to those that are to the modeming, then, yes, the drives and the tapes, or really, the envelopes with the tapes and other things are brought up to the county. So, you know that information is aggregated. We have modems, so our equipment is certified with our modem. So, but sometimes they, you know, they can't get a good signal or whatever. We have other ways to get it, and sometimes they just drive it up. And so everything is air capped, you know, there's no, there's no internet touching of anything. So, you know. And then we eventually, you know, once we with all the air gapping everything. We push the results out on our website. Yeah.
So the the local the precincts, they would deliver their stuff to the to the township clerk or the municipal clerk, and then they would transmit it to, you
know, from the precinct to their motoming. Oh, okay, from the precinct, they're motivating. But you know, like some of our schools, I think they have lead walls, honestly, where my kids went to school. I know my kids could never get a signal in school, which on their phones, which perhaps was maybe a good thing, but the cafeteria, you have to, like, stand in the corner on one foot and put your other arm in the air and you know,
but that's going to differ by county. So that's going to differ by county. But the general concept is, they by by one means or another, they deliver the results that they have tabulated and and checked, they deliver that to the county clerk, who then feeds it into their system and reports the county results.
Yes, local clerks may have on their website their own results as well. But yeah,
yeah, all right. And then how do you get that to the the Secretary of State? Yeah, yeah.
So once we have everything, we then have to put that into a program for the state,
and it's electronically communicated to the state,
not verbally,
right? Yeah, yep, and then all these envelopes and the ballots, do they just remain with the county, or does it all get sent to the state or
no? Nothing goes to the state, and the ballots stay with the local clerks, unless, unless they need to be brought in during the canvas, if we need to re tabulate, if something doesn't balance or something, then they bring the ballot container in. We check the seal number and all that before we crack it open and re tabulate. But otherwise, the ballots stay with the local clerk. And in the Canvas we go through the poll book, and we have a board of canvassers, which is made up of two Democrats and two Republicans, and we go through every precinct, we check a lot of things, but I would say the I don't like saying this, but I will say, like, probably the most important thing is making sure that that each precinct balance, meaning the number of ballots that were tabulated, matches the number of names that were in the poll book, yep.
So that's we have, physically 497 precincts. So, yeah, well, we're at the county, so yeah, you know, and that's not counting the absentee counting boards or the early voting sites, either. So yeah, take us the full two weeks to get through everything. Yeah,
and you're now the results that we see on election night a lot of the time. In fact, most of the elections I can ever remember, 2000 of course, was an exception, but you know that the unofficial results usually are maybe not 100% accurate, but they do indicate the right result. Generally speaking, yeah, I'd agree with that. And so I think what a lot of people are wanting to know is, well, when will we have that unofficial result that's, you know, going to be mostly correct you will we get that in Michigan? Will we get that on Tuesday night, or will it be early hours? I
could not tell you. I mean, every county is different. Every you know, who knows how many people are going to wait till 8pm to drop off their absentee ballot, you know, and delay the results? Who know? I mean, I know in 2012 we had huge lines at precincts. Hopefully we don't have that anymore after eight o'clock. You know, people were in line before eight o'clock. So I'm going to ask you a favor. Can I call you back? I have to get away from my I have an event to be at 530 so I have to get in my car. But can I call you back from my cell phone?
Well, yes, of course, yeah. Thank you, yep.
Okay, let me call you back and let me get into my car and I will call you back a couple
minutes. Okay. Yep. All
right, thank you. Bye bye.
Much longer I just you've been so good to answer all
these questions, it really gives me a solid overview. I one question, I know, I just slipped my mind and I forgotten where we were when we broke off the conversation.
When we have results? Oh, yes, yeah, unofficial results.
I mean, when will we be all done? When
will I have everything in I not tell you, you know, we will have some results out by 8:05pm, how much of that? I, you know, I can't say, but it takes as long as it takes, as long as it
takes it again, people can return their absentee ballots
as long as they, you know, return it by eight o'clock. So drop boxes, which are now not just at the clerk's office, they have to have one for every 15,000 in their community so they're around the community. So they have to send out, you know, a team to go empty the drop boxes at 8pm they have to drive those back to City Hall. They have to check all those down the lobes before they can even, you know, process them. So all of that takes time. So, I mean, I I keep telling people what, nothing's gonna happen between six and 8pm like, what are you waiting for? I don't understand why people literally wait for the very last second to return their ballot. But, you know, some people do, I can't, you know, yeah, well, this
is so helpful and and I just one, one question that I I'll ask you, I think I know the answer, and it's, it's not related to this story, but important for my reporting and our reporting On election day, it appears to me that in Michigan, reporters are allowed access to the polling places without prior permission. Is that accurate? So there's no credentialing, but you cannot
take pictures because the privacy of the ballot, you can no one can take pictures where people are filling out ballots. So
I'll have a photographer with me on election day, so he would not be allowed to take even wide shots or background. Okay, nothing inside the polling place. Nothing you can do it out and some,
I know some clerks have even set up like selfie stations as I voted and they're standing behind me. Now we have to ensure the privacy of everyone's ballot. And, you know, someone could take a picture and then zoom in on somebody. It seems like it's, you know, a wide shot that you wouldn't be able to see. But yep, understood. And as I
think Michigan is like, it'll be up to the, you know, up to the clerk to say
what they where they would like, right, right. Okay,
that's extremely helpful. Just one little horror story you mentioned, late voting. My son in law was a was a precinct worker in Indiana in 2020 and they had so many people in line when the polls closed, they were voting till 11 o'clock at night. They didn't get their ballots delivered up to county until like two in the morning. Yeah, well, that's typical for us, to be honest
with you. I mean, we're there in August. We were there till 1am and we still didn't have everything from our locals. And when we called them, they still hadn't finished counting their absentee ballots, and they didn't have one of them didn't even have a lot. We count their absentee ballots, so it wasn't like they had a lot, but they just weren't organized. So, you know, we said, When are you going to be done? And they said, We don't know. We said, Okay, well, we're going home and we'll be back at seven o'clock in the morning, because it wasn't I well. Thank you very much for your time, Lisa,
I also enjoyed your video about about the canvas and about writing votes. I've got a friend who writes my website. Yes, I've been on your website. Yeah, I have a friend who's votes for his dad every year. He lives in Washington State. I don't know what they do out there, but I he, I think he'd be so dismayed to find out his dad hasn't been getting votes for president.
Well, thank you again. I greatly appreciate your time and
best wishes for a smooth election. In a few weeks here. Thank you I appreciate.
