We’re nearly two weeks away from the midterm election! How’s everyone doing?
Last time, we talked about election anxiety, and that maybe the best way to handle it is to get involved yourself in the election process.
To find out more about this, I went to a training in Grand Rapids for election inspectors. I have to say, it was fascinating. I learned way more than I was expecting, and also got the answer to a few of your questions along the way.
What's an election inspector?
There’s more than one way to get involved in the election process in Michigan, but becoming an election inspector is pretty much the most involved.
Election inspectors are the people who are actually working at the polls. They check your registration, hand you the ballot, and show you how to put the ballot in the machine. And, very importantly, they get you your “I Voted” sticker.
This is a paid job, and state law requires inspectors to undergo training.
At the training in Grand Rapids, City Clerk Joel Hondorp told the trainees 99.8% of voters show up in the right place, have the right documents and vote without any problems. The two-hour training, he told them, was about what to do about the other 0.2%.
“Elections are a very human process,” Hondorp said. “And, sometimes, errors are made.”
People move, and try to vote in their old precinct. People walk in with the same name as a deceased parent, and for some reason find that they were removed from the voter rolls when the parent passed away. People show up wearing campaign gear for someone on the ballot (which is not allowed in Michigan).
Election inspectors are the ones who watch out for the errors, and get them fixed so voting can run smoothly and accurately in the end.
Speaking of errors, we’ve had multiple questions about what happens if you leave part of the ballot blank. Here’s one of them:
First, I have to say, if you want to know more about regents or judges, we covered them previously on The Mids. You can also check out Morning Edition Host Doug Tribou’s interviews with Supreme Court candidates and our rundown of regents candidates at the University of Michigan.
Second, if you still feel unprepared or uninspired to vote in those, or any other races, it’s totally fine to leave sections of the ballot blank!
In fact, I learned at the election inspector training, you can leave the entire ballot blank. This is, apparently, something people actually do. It will show that a ballot was cast, and it will count for voter turnout, but no votes will be recorded in any of the races.
What about overvoting?
Hondorp said voters also sometimes overvote - that is, they fill in too many ovals for the available number of seats. This year, for example, 15 people are running for five available seats on the Grand Rapids Public Schools Board of Education. Hondorp said voters may get “oval happy” and mark off six candidates, instead of five.
If you overvote, the ballot tabulator will show an error screen, telling you exactly what the problem is. You can either take the ballot back, spoil it and start over, or you can tell it to cast the ballot anyway, and it will count the rest of the ballot but skip the section with the overvote (meaning your vote for that section won’t count).
Are election inspectors partisan?
State law requires every voting location to have at least three election inspectors, though more are allowed. Inspectors can be as young as 16. If the inspector is 18 or older, they must be a registered voter, and must declare which political party most represents their leanings. State law advises that there should be “partisan balance” in the inspectors assigned to each precinct, but Hondorp said in a city that doesn’t have partisan balance among its residents, that’s not always possible.
If this sounds like a job you’d like to do, it’s not too late to sign up. First, find your local clerk, and then visit the Michigan Secretary of State’s website for more information.
My favorite inspector training takeaways:
- It doesn’t matter which way you insert your ballot into the tabulator (“It can go in every which way except sideways,” Hondorp said.)
- If you have a damaged absentee ballot, you can bring it into the precinct to get a new one (Hondorp said one voter actually had a dog eat their ballot, “literally you could see the teeth marks.”)
- You can bring your own pen to fill in the ovals, but it has to be a blue or black ballpoint. Absolutely no gel pens allowed because the ink dries too slowly and can smear the inside of the tabulator (“I know more about ink and paper than I ever cared to do,” Hondorp said.)
- Voters can’t wear any campaign gear that supports a specific party or candidate on the ballot. But general political messages, or messages supporting candidates not on the ballot, are okay. (Hondorp said that means messages like “Black Lives Matter” and even “Make America Great Again” are allowed at the polls this time around.)
- There’s a “no selfie” rule in the ballot box. But you can take a picture of the ballot, as long as you’re not in it.
- Votes for Mickey Mouse don’t get counted. Write in whatever you want (Hondorp says some people write “nasty stuff”), but only verified write-in candidates are counted. All your other creative write-ins are lost to history.
Another way to get involved
If you don’t want to work the election, but you still want to keep a close eye and have a say in certain situations at the polls, you can sign up to be a challenger.
Challengers are volunteers affiliated with specific organizations who can play a role in double-checking whether election inspectors are following the right process, or whether a person is actually eligible to vote at that location.
There are very specific rules about how a challenger has to go about their job, and because of that, they are also required to undergo training and recite an oath once they arrive at the polling place.
Importantly, challengers must follow the instructions of election inspectors, and can only communicate their challenges to the assigned “challenger liaison,” who is the one election inspector assigned to deal with them. The state of Michigan has a 33-page guide on the rights and duties of challengers and poll watchers, and it’s worth highlighting this one passage:
“A challenger may challenge a voter’s eligibility only by making a challenge to the challenger liaison or the challenger liaison’s designee. The challenger must make the challenge in a (discreet) manner not intended to embarrass the challenged voter, intimidate other voters, or otherwise disrupt the election process. A challenger liaison will warn a challenger who violates any of these prohibitions; if a challenger repeatedly violates any of these prohibitions, the challenger may be ejected from the polling place or early voting site.”
Disruptive challengers were at the heart of the infamous scene at the TCF Center in Detroit in 2020, as observers told Stateside. But the challenger process is not always contentious and dramatic.
However, if signing up as a challenger is also not your speed, there’s one last way to be involved.
Be a looky-loo
Poll watchers don’t have to sign up with any organization, do any training, or even be registered voters. These people, in the words of Grand Rapids clerk Joel Hondorp, are more like “looky-loos” just there to watch.
Every polling place should have a public area where poll watchers can stand and observe the process. The only reasons you’ll be stopped are if you’re running for office yourself, in which case you can’t be a poll watcher, or the public area is already full of poll watchers.
Beyond that, you just have to follow the instructions from the elections inspectors and the usual rules for polling places - no photos, no video, and no disrupting the process.
You don’t even have to make a plan beforehand.
“Go down to a precinct, and say, ‘Where’s the public area? I just want to watch,’ and you can,” Hondorp told me. “You can watch the process, it’s all open to the public.”
You can even be there before and after the polls open.
“You don’t have to have an official title to watch elections,” Hondorp said. “From when we walk in the doors at the precincts ‘til we close the doors at the end of the night, it is a public process.”
So if you have any lingering anxieties about how this will all go down, go be a part of it!
We’ll be back in two weeks with a look at how your votes get counted, so you’ll know what to expect when results start pouring (or trickling) in.
Until next time,
Dustin Dwyer, Reporter
Producer's Corner
Missed one of Dustin’s deep dives? We’ve got you covered!
- Can you trust the election process?
- University governing boards on your ballot?
- Will the youth vote?
- A constitutional convention in 2026?
- What about the judges?
- Are you ready for the primary?
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Today’s newsletter was written by Dustin Dwyer, produced by Kalloli Bhatt, and edited by Michelle Keller.
