Michigan election worker knows and trusts the system inside and out

As senior elections coordinator in the West Bloomfield County clerk’s office, Tony Weatherly answers questions from the box office, over the phone and even from temporary workers in the back room.

When does early voting start?

26 October.

If a man leaves a stray mark on his absentee ballot, should he spoil the ballot and redo it?

Probably so he can trust his ballot.

Can a U.S. military member stationed overseas have a family member return a domestic absentee ballot after returning from a visit?

Yes.

It’s a question that comes up frequently in social settings, which Weatherly isn’t too quick to answer these days.

“People say, ‘Hey, what do you do for a living?’ “I’m a city employee,” Weatherly said. “If I’m meeting someone new, we’re not going to talk too much about it. Let’s not talk about work. Let’s talk about other things.”

It wasn’t always this way.

Weatherly has been working on elections in two municipalities for about nine years. He’s proud of his work, but in a political era marked by anger and division, he’s heard every complaint and conspiracy theory about the election.

“Things have changed. “I think there’s always been someone out there saying dead people are voting,” Weatherly said. “It’s always been that way, but I think it’s gotten a lot worse in the last four years. There’s suspicion that the election isn’t going as it should.”

He said it is possible for a voter to submit an absentee ballot and then die before the election, but there is a system in place to catch them.

“We get what’s called a qualified voter file inbox and we get notifications about all kinds of things,” he said. “One of them we got was to cancel the situation, pass away.”

These notifications are based on death certificates issued.

When one of these notifications arrives, Weatherly or another employee will track down the ballot from the precinct where it was selected and place it somewhere. rejected vote file. These are the votes that are not counted.

Working in elections once carried a certain level of social respect from residents who appreciated the civic consciousness that led people to work diligently to do things right. But those days seem to be behind us. Election officials faced threats from angry voters.

Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s top election official. became a target so-called shaking attacks. These are when an anonymous caller calls 911 to falsely report a critical incident at the officer’s home, hoping to draw a response from the police.

As a result, some clerks are having difficulty finding people willing to work in elections. Some counties in Michigan have had trouble nominating people for clerks.

“This is really happening,” said Mike Selden, member information services manager for the Michigan Township Association. “If there is no one running for clerk or any other office, and if anyone becomes vacant based on the election, then who is the person who will be vacating that office by January 1?”

Selden said the county board has 45 days, starting Jan. 2, to appoint someone to the position, and if they can’t find anyone, the County Clerk will call a special election to fill the position.

Weatherly, on the other hand, does this because he enjoys the job. He said he has confidence in the election system because he knows how it works and knows people who describe their co-workers as “my family.”

Weatherly is 43 years old. He grew up in neighboring Commerce County. After finishing high school, he enlisted in the Marine Corps and after graduation went to college on the GI Bill. He worked in Rochester Hills and West Bloomfield.

He takes his job so seriously that he planned his wedding last year close to the election dates. He waited until the 2022 midterm elections were over.

“We planned it for June 2023 because there was no election for me to worry about,” he said. “After the midterm was over, we were able to focus on wedding planning. We literally planned the wedding around election day.

On a recent weekday, he emptied ballot papers in sealed envelopes from ballot boxes next to the town hall. The ballots were mailed about 10 days ago, and as the election approaches, the number of people dropping off their ballots increases.

Upon entering the clerk’s office, the first stop for ballots is a black box the size of a large toaster that sits on the counter in front of Weatherly’s desk.

The label on it says “Silent Edition” and that’s not entirely true. It makes a loud noise when you stamp the time and date on the envelopes.

This hum becomes a soundtrack of sorts as ballots arrive throughout the day at the office, from mailboxes, by mail, and by people hand-delivering their ballots at the box office.

Once the envelopes are stamped, they are given to another employee who scans the barcodes on the return envelopes. This calls up voter information on a computer and marks them as received at the office.

If voters want to see if their mail-in ballot has arrived at the clerk’s office, check your status online.

“Then at that point they’re going to come to this table and we’re going to get heaps of them as a team, as a group,” Weatherly said. “Then we literally check the signatures on all of them to make sure each one matches.”

To match signatures, Weatherly pulls an electronic copy from his computer of the signature card the voter signed when they first registered to vote. For comparison, she holds the return envelope containing the absentee ballot toward him. If it matches, it would be good to have a vote.

“Then we can mark them as approved for scheduling,” he said.

Weatherly checks the box on the envelope indicating approval and then initials the box to indicate that he is the approver.

So what happens if the signature doesn’t match?

Weatherly said this happened for legitimate reasons. People’s handwriting changes slightly over time. If a voter has a stroke or is injured, they may have difficulty creating their own signature.

In such cases, the person questioning the signature will ask other people in the office to examine the signature.

“It’s never just one person,” Weatherly said.

If the consensus is that the signature is incorrect, they will contact the voter to begin a process known as curation. If the person does not correct this, the ballot will be canceled and not counted.

Once ballots are approved for tabulation, they are sorted by precinct and ballot number so that when it comes time to open the envelopes and run them through the tabulator, this can be done in an orderly manner.

The procedures are tedious and often time consuming. Weatherly said each clerk’s office has its own way of handling the process, but for the most part, everything is spelled out in election law.

For example, American citizens living abroad are allowed to vote. A small percentage of West Bloomfield’s 57,000 or so registered voters fall into that category.

“We have 325 civilians overseas and 13 soldiers deployed,” Weatherly said.

These voters can receive their absentee ballot via traditional mail, email or fax.

“They have the right to choose,” Weatherly said.

It sends out ballots with instructions on how to fill them out. If the ballot is sent via email, the voter must print it out and mail it back.

In these cases, the image that can be processed through the table generator will not be included in the paper.

During the calculation, these overseas envelopes are opened and two people, one from each political party, examine the ballot paper inside. They then fill out a ballot printed on official paper that can be run through a tabulator by the voter to match the ballot printed overseas.

This official vote can be reviewed at a later time to be counted.

Signatures on these ballots are subject to the same verification procedure as others.

Last morning, Weatherly received ballots from Canada, Mexico and the Netherlands, each bearing that country’s postage. Weatherly is familiar with the process from both sides.

“I lived in Japan when I was in the Navy and that’s how I voted,” he said.

State law also requires other measures to help increase confidence in the system.

Every municipality is required to test its tabulators before elections, including a public test that anyone can witness.

Oakland County installs the software on machines that list candidates and ballot questions. West Bloomfield Clerk Debbie Binder said her office received a batch of sample ballots, known as a test deck. The vote totals in that deck are known before the test.

Staff runs them through the tabulator to see if they are counted correctly. If the numbers in the tables do not match known numbers in the test set, the machine is marked faulty.

“On Election Day, after testing, you reset to absentee ballot,” West Bloomfield Clerk Debbie Binder said. “Upon arrival at the precinct, the precinct runs a zero tape indicating that each contest does not have the votes to begin.”

Weatherly said many of the doubts people express about election integrity are based on misinformation.

“Many people think they received more than one ballot in the mail. They’re not,” he said. “They’re taking multiple applications for the ballot.

“A lot of people don’t trust mailboxes. They want to come in and give their ballot to a person. I understand that to a certain level, but I’m the same person who controls the mailboxes that I have. They have access, so they’re safe. They’re under surveillance 24/7.”

With multiple people involved in the process, checks and balances built into the system ensure the process is safe, Weatherly said. Someone trying to cheat would need to bypass multiple protections, not to mention humans.

“It would be astronomical to accomplish anything without getting caught by anyone,” he said.

Contact John Wisely: [email protected] @jwisely

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