OTTAWA COUNTY, Mich. — Monday kicked off the preprocessing of absentee ballots in Michigan for jurisdictions with a population of more than 5,000.
Ottawa County Clerk Justin Roebuck said it starts with a nonpartisan group verifying the received absentee ballots.
"That outer envelope contains a signature of the voter, and that signature has already been verified by the election official, the clerk, the local clerk, but they're ensuring the signature is there. They're also opening that envelope making sure that there's the numbered stub that is on top of the ballot,” said Roebuck.
Then, the nonpartisan group of workers separates the ballots from the envelopes they came in and places the ballot in a secret sleeve to keep the voters' vote private.
Once that's all done, the ballots are tabulated.
"They are counted in the tabulator. And for preprocessing, results are not released until Election Day,” said Roebuck.
Roebuck said this process not only helps speed up the process, but also helps keep the process transparent to the public.
"If I'm an organization or a political party that's trying to encourage observers to come in and watch to, you know, make sure everything is happening appropriately, I think it's a lot easier for them to do that, you know, on a Monday at 10 a.m. versus calling in and trying to find someone to observe a process that's happening at three or four in the morning on the Wednesday following an election,” said Roebuck.
The processing of absentee ballots is something people can publicly view.
This process isn't mandatory, with only six out of 23 jurisdictions in Ottawa County are doing this process.
Roebuck said this gives communities the flexibility to decide what process works best for them.
"Absentee ballots, that's a known quantity. That's something that we're keeping an eye on every day. We see how many ballots that we have and that that are needed to be able to be counted. And so, as our local clerks are really, I think, best suited to make that decision,” said Roebuck.
So far, 69% of absentee ballots have been turned in. People can still turn in their absentee ballots until 8:00 p.m. on Election Day.