Local clerks say Election Day was challenging, but a success

Clerks in some of Oakland County’s largest communities are calling Election Day a challenge due to the surge in absentee ballots, but an overall success.

In Oakland County, 775,158 ballots were cast countywide, of which over 60% were cast absentee, keeping clerks and the staff busy throughout Election Day and some into the early morning hours on Election Day, including clerks in Novi, Waterford Township, Oakland Township, and Rochester Hills.

Some of the more significant challenges for clerks included the volume of Michiganders who chose to register to vote and cast their ballots on Election Day at their clerk’s office. Another was

the limited amount of time before Election Day that clerks had to begin preprocessing the historic and record-breaking number of absentee ballots cast.

By approving Senate Bill 757, the State Legislature provided local clerks an additional 10 hours, on Monday, to begin the pre-processing of absentee ballots, which did help, but clerks are continuing to advocate for more time with other states granting their local clerks weeks to begin early processing of ballots.

TROY

Aileen Dickson, Troy city clerk, said Election Day in Oakland County’s largest community was “extraordinarily busy, but overall very successful,” adding “we did not have any major issues.” The city processed and counted over 66,000 ballots, the most of any community countywide.

“We did have lines at some precincts at the beginning of the day, but that is to be expected,” she said. “We added poll booths to some precincts that were busier than others, and that helped, so by the afternoon, the wait times were down to maybe 20- 30 minutes. Overall, though, the precincts ran very smoothly all day.”

Dickson said her biggest challenge was making sure poll workers and voters were safe while inside polling locations during a global pandemic. Poll workers and polling locations countywide were well- equipped with cleaning and disinfecting supplies to insure everyone, including those casting ballots at the polls, were safe.

With the surge in absentee ballots, over 3.3 million cast statewide and 400,000 in Oakland County, local absent voter counting board were very busy. They are charged with processing and tabulating a community’s absentee ballots.

Dickson said Troy’s absent voter counting board was a “tremendous success.” The city’s AV counting board pre-processed over 31,000 ballots on Monday. On Election Day, a total of 34,836 absentee ballots were tabulated by the counting board.

“We were processed, sealed, cleaned up and had our results transmitted by 12:45 a.m. Wednesday,” she said. “We did not have any issues at all in the absent voter counting board. I’m incredibly proud of and grateful to everyone who worked for Troy during this election season.”

ROYAL OAK

In Royal Oak, the county’s sixth-largest community, over 25,000 absentee ballots were cast. Over 52,000 ballots were cast.

City Clerk Melanie Halas said same- day voter registration will continue to be one of the city’s biggest challenges on Election Day moving forward. On Election Day, 436 residents requested ballots over the counter at the clerks’ office, of which 171 also registered vote at the same time.

“The precincts were very busy in the morning and were steady throughout the day,” she said. “They were pretty slow between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m.”

The city’s absentee ballots were processed by the Oakland County Absent Voter Counting Board, which is made up of 16 communities.

Joe Rozell, Oakland County’s elections director, said the county’s AV counting board processed and tabulated 144,118 absentee ballots on Election Day for 16 communities. The counting was complete at 9 p.m.

“Everything ran extremely efficient and our absentee results were posted at 8 p.m.,” said Halas. “I’m really pleased how everything was handled.”