Governor Gretchen Whitmer says she would sign a bill to allow faster processing of absentee ballots on primary election night.
The state’s March 10th presidential primary is three weeks away.
There’s already been a surge in requests for absentee ballots and many local clerks are concerned the time spenty processing them will delay finalizing results by many hours. One answer would be to allow election workers to remove ballots from their envelopes, but keep them in their secrecy sleeves and line them up to be tabulated.
Governor Whitmer says Michigan should show the country the state can count ballots accurately and quickly.
“I’m certainly open to a conversation about how we ensure that every vote gets counted and it gets counted on time.”
The Legislature’s Republican leaders say early processing could put ballot security at risk.