In Detroit, Wayne and Macomb counties, primary election results have been slow to be released, raising fears that similar delays in the Nov. 5 general election will fuel conspiracy theories about election integrity.
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Detroit, Wayne and Macomb counties lagged behind the rest of the state in announcing results from Tuesday’s primary election, raising fears that a similar outcome in the Nov. 5 general election could fuel conspiracy theories about election integrity.
State lawmakers recently passed a law allowing poll workers to begin counting absentee ballots up to a week before polls close at 8 p.m. on Election Day. Yet Wayne, Macomb — and especially Detroit — lagged behind most other states in releasing election results.
“It would have been great to know the outcome sooner,” said Sam Riddle, an adviser to Mary Waters, who ran for the Democratic nomination in the 13th Congressional District. “Given the low turnout – the shockingly low turnout – you would have thought we could have had results sooner.”
“I don’t understand what’s going on there,” Riddle added, “but I don’t work in the clerk’s office.”
Detroit began releasing partial vote totals at 1:15 a.m. Wednesday, and the elections office’s website showed 0% for “precincts that fully reported their vote totals.” Vote totals had not been updated since 10:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Also at around 1:15 a.m., Wayne County, which includes Detroit, announced vote totals for only 2% of its precincts. Macomb County announced vote totals for only 39% of its precincts.
At about the same time, Oakland County reported results from nearly 94% of its polling places, Kent County reported results from 85% of its polling places, and Genesee County reported results from 78% of its polling places.
Jonathan Kinloch, a Wayne County commissioner and former member of the county’s election board, which verifies election results, said he was concerned about the delay in releasing vote totals.
“The whole world will be watching us in November,” Kinloch said.
Michigan has been in the national spotlight since 2016, when Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton here by about 11,000 votes. Delays in reporting vote totals, particularly in Detroit, left the outcome of the election uncertain until the day after the election. In 2020, after President Joe Biden defeated Trump in Michigan by more than 150,000 votes, Trump used the delay in reporting vote totals to claim the election was rigged.
“Donald Trump has never stopped denigrating and insulting Detroit’s election processes and questioning their integrity,” Kinloch said. “Despite all of that, we are fully aware of what is at stake, and I have spoken personally with the election authorities, and they know the microscope they will be under – not just from here, but nationally and, more broadly, internationally. Because the world is watching us.”
Daniel Baxter, a senior aide to Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey, told the Free Press at 2:30 a.m. Wednesday that two factors delayed the release of Detroit’s vote totals: an unexpectedly large number of absentee ballots arriving on Election Day and a computer glitch.
“Tuesday was an unusual day for a primary election,” Baxter said. “Nearly 10,000 cast their (mail-in) ballots today.”
He said that was nearly double the number of mail-in ballots that normally arrive on Election Day.
Apparently, the results for Detroit were not released until 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday. Voter turnout in Detroit was about 16% – less than a third of the expected turnout for the November 5 general election.
Still, Baxter said, the Detroit clerk will hire additional staff to handle the increased workload.
“We are not overly concerned at all,” he said, adding that he was “completely confident” that Detroit would produce results much more quickly in November.
Dorian Tyus, a spokesman for Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett, said the delay in posting local municipalities’ information on the county clerk’s website was “partly due to a technical issue. We had a firewall issue in our IT and because of the firewall issue, our municipalities were unable to submit the data electronically.”
He said towns and cities had to submit their results to the county clerk’s office in downtown Detroit, which led to a delay in entering the information into the county’s system and releasing it to the public.
Tyus said an investigation and assessment of the incident is underway, but he does not know how long that will take. He said officials want to take the proper steps to ensure something like this does not happen again in November.
“We have backup processes in place that ran yesterday to make sure the results continue to come in and are accurate and complete,” Tyus said. “It’s just not as timely because we weren’t able to submit it over the internet.”
Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini said the results are not being transmitted electronically because uncertified tabulation modems cannot be used. He said his office receives computer thumb drives with the information from each municipality.
He said: “It makes it seem like our results are coming later than expected. It makes it seem like others are better organized, which is not the case,” Forlini said, adding that the information simply cannot be transmitted so quickly.
Forlini said he worked with Sheriff Anthony Wickersham during this election and the previous one to collect the data from communities that were willing to work with them. A deputy and clerk in a patrol car collected the data in a secure process. Forlini said four patrol cars were out in eight to 10 participating communities on Tuesday.
Forlini said his office received the first results around 9:30 p.m. on Tuesday, “and actually they did a good job with the participants… Compared to the past, we were actually able to release the results quite early thanks to the partnership.”
Although Oakland County may have posted more of its results online earlier, Forlini said Macomb County “hit the 100 percent mark before Oakland County.”
More: All results of the 2024 Michigan primary election can be found here
Forlini said Clinton Township has a mail-in ballot issue that needs to be resolved. He said there are “a lot of checks and balances throughout the system so everyone is double-checking everything and making sure everything is correct.”
“We are better this time than last time,” said Forlini, adding: “We have to do a better job in the fall.”
Angela Benander, spokeswoman for Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, said of Detroit and Wayne County, “We believe the city and county followed proper procedures in navigating the unfortunate logistical challenges on Tuesday that prevented a more timely announcement of unofficial results. Officials and their teams are planning for these challenges, setting up backup systems and quickly switching to those backup systems when needed.”
She said state election officials would “continue to work with local officials to find additional efficiencies to speed up the process. However, this would never come at the expense of the accuracy of the unofficial count.”
Kinloch, the former Wayne County election official, said he was not concerned about the performance of Detroit and Wayne County officials in the primary election. He said new technology and equipment were partly to blame for the delay in announcing vote totals.
“It was a great test run,” Kinloch said. “Hopefully they took a lot of notes.”
ML Elrick is a Pulitzer Prize- and Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter and host of the podcast “ML’s Soul of Detroit.” Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on X at @elrickFacebook at ML Elrick and Instagram at ml_elrick. Free Press reporter Christina Hall contributed to this story.
