How Michigan's Election Safeguards Prevent Double Voting • Michigan Advance

This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization that reports on local election administration and voting access. Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization that reports on voting access and voting administration in the United States. Sign up for Votebeat Michigan’s free newsletter here.

Officials say four voters are suspected of voting twice in the Macomb County primary election; local police are currently investigating the case.

The fact that the problems were reported so quickly should reassure Michigan voters rather than alarm them, officials say. It's a sign that the state's systems are secure enough to stop or at least catch duplicate votes, and further evidence that widespread voter fraud is unlikely in the state.

In Michigan, it is a crime to vote twice, and documented cases of voters casting more than one ballot are extremely rare. A 2022 audit by the state's auditor general found that of the more than 11.7 million votes cast in the state in multiple elections, 99.99% were not duplicates.

That's in no small part because of the safeguards put in place throughout the election process to prevent voters from casting more than one ballot, or to catch them if they do. That's part of what makes Michigan's elections so secure, officials say.

Possible double voting in Macomb County after August 6 primary election under investigation

In most cases, voters who wish to cast two ballots are held up at their polling place when e-pollbooks – the computers used to register voters – show that a voter has already cast a mail-in ballot. If the e-pollbook shows that a voter has received a mail-in ballot but has not yet cast it, poll workers will arrange for the mail-in ballot to be invalidated before allowing the voter to cast their ballot in person.

When double voting occurs, it's usually a matter of timing – an in-person vote is cast before a clerk has a chance to mark a mail-in ballot as returned. If a voter casts their vote in person before their mail-in ballot is processed, the clerk processing the mail-in ballot is notified of the potential double vote.

This happened in the primary election, said Anthony Forlini, Macomb County clerk, but a poll worker overrode the system to allow the second votes through.

“That's one of the reasons we're talking about it so publicly,” Forlini told Votebeat, promising that workers would do nothing like that in November.

St. Clair Shores Clerk Abby Barrett said her team discovered the four cases of double voting in two ways: through printed reports from the qualified voter file and through the paper trail that showed the suspected double voters had signed an absentee ballot envelope and an application form that they had turned in in person at a polling place.

“We immediately brought this to the attention of the District Attorney and the Election Office,” Barrett wrote in an email.

Forlini said this was the first case of possible double voting that he knew of in his four years as Macomb County clerk. But he said it was important to him that the county be very public about potential problems because he wanted to be transparent about what the election process actually looks like to prevent rumors or conspiracy theories.

“I don't want to hide the problems we might have,” Forlini said. “I want to look at the issue immediately, see it for what it is and deal with it.”

Macomb County is considered a swing county and regularly draws national attention during presidential elections because it is seen as an indicator of political trends. But Forlini, a Republican, said his focus is more on making clear that the county held “a good, clean election.”

Mistakes can happen, he said, because even the best poll workers are human. He believes local poll workers in Macomb County are basically good people who want to do a good job, as evidenced by Barrett's prompt reporting on the problems in her town.

“In Michigan, elections are very decentralized, which makes us one of the best in the country because large-scale voter fraud is not possible here,” he said. “Many parties are involved in every election.”

“That doesn't mean there won't be problems,” he said, “but it's fair to say that if you have good people, elections will go well.”

In the August primary election in St. Clair Shores, 13,146 votes were cast. The city has a population of about 57,500.