Lansing election workers test tabulators and secure ballots before Election Day
Before any Michigan vote is counted, election workers in Lansing will have already tested tabulators, secured ballots, and locked down all equipment. The process is built to protect elections across the state, with counties programming tabulators while cities and townships manage the front lines. Lansing City Clerk Chris Swope says that the division of responsibilities, along with pre‑election testing, post‑election audits and strict handling of ballots, keeps the counts accurate.
Swope notes that Lansing employs several hundred election workers, and state law requires them to be assigned by party and balanced as closely as possible between Republicans and Democrats. The city is recruiting more Republicans this year to help balance its workforce. Workers receive training sessions and hands‑on practice with the equipment, and may use an electronic poll book that provides training on handling different scenarios, including voters going to the wrong voting location. Absentee ballots are the first form of voting and carry their own safeguards; Lansing has roughly 23,000 voters on its permanent mail ballot list, each assigned a unique ballot number that is checked once the ballot is returned to confirm the voter sent back the correct one.
After absentee ballots are opened, workers remove the ballot number before taking the ballot out of its secrecy sleeve. There’s never anybody who’s alone with an open ballot. Michigan requires one drop box for every 15,000 registered voters, and Lansing has 13 drop boxes, exceeding the minimum by six. The drop boxes are locked and under video surveillance as the city collects ballots daily. Absentee ballots go through the same processes as mailed ballots: they are scanned, signatures are verified, and election workers sort each ballot by precinct and check to make sure they have the right number for each precinct. Midland County’s election management system compiles the results without connecting to the internet, and to post unofficial results online, the data is moved onto a flash drive that is wiped after every use.
Read the full story at news.jrn.msu.edu.