Local clerks or authorized personnel appointed by the clerk must be available in the clerk's office for at least 8 hours, offered in some combination on Saturday, Aug. 3 and/or Sunday, Aug. 4. The hours do not need to be the same hours as early voting hours. On Saturday and/or Sunday, voters may register to vote with residency verification and/or request an absentee ballot in person.

County and local clerks cannot shorten or extend polling hours unless directed to do so by the proper legal authority. If an emergency occurs within your jurisdiction that could potentially interrupt the voting process or that closes one or more of your jurisdiction’s early voting sites or polling places, take direction from local law enforcement officials and call BOE as soon as possible. If it is necessary to evacuate an early voting site or polling place for any reason, instruct the election inspectors to take possession of the pollbook before leaving if it is safe to do so.

If an emergency occurs outside your jurisdiction that raises questions about the possible interruption of the voting process or the suspension of the election, contact local emergency and law enforcement personnel for any security-related concerns but do not make any changes to voting procedures without direction from BOE. Election Day polling hours cannot be extended beyond 8 p.m. without a court order.

Reminders:

• Tabulators and some VATs will run for a significant amount of time without a power source if properly charged. Keep all devices, including electronic pollbooks, charging throughout early voting and on Election Day.
• Voting can continue in the event of a loss of power. Be sure to use auxiliary bins for ballots and paper backup pollbooks if the electronic equipment is not working. Flashlights should be available in each early voting site or precinct, and if possible, you should make arrangements to have access to a generator.
• In the event of a wide-scale emergency during early voting or on Election Day, BOE will send an urgent News Update.

MOVE ballots postmarked on or before Election Day and received within six days after Election Day are considered timely received. In determining timeliness, if the postmark on the AV ballot return envelope is unclear, the local clerk delivers it to the county clerk who then determines whether it was timely received.

Local clerks must deliver all MOVE AV ballots to their county clerk by the seventh day after Election Day. In determining timeliness, if the postmark on the AV ballot return envelope is unclear but the county clerk determines that the AV ballot return envelope or voter certificate was dated on or before Election Day, it is considered timely received.

Timely received MOVE AV ballots are tabulated by the county clerk in a meeting of the board of county canvassers. Instructions on processing these ballots are in the eLearning Center.

A voter who is unable to enter the polling place may request to vote using the curbside voting process. The curbside voting process must be carried out by two election inspectors who have expressed a preference for different political parties. While curbside voting usually involves a voter who cannot leave their car to enter the polling place, election inspectors may not ask the voter why the voter has requested to vote using the curbside voting process.

A voter requesting curbside assistance is subject to all of the same requirements regarding the application to vote and voter identification requirement but receives assistance from election inspectors in delivering the voted ballot, inside a secrecy sleeve, to the tabulator. These procedures are unchanged from previous elections. For more information on the curbside voting process, see page 19 of Election Officials Manual - Chapter 11: Election Day 

The Bureau of Elections has completed its review of the Presidential Primary reimbursement submissions and has sent the submissions over to Treasury for payment processing. Treasury will issue payment by Oct. 31. Reimbursement amount is based on the submission amount unless additional correction was needed. If additional correction was needed, BOE provided the reimbursement amount via email. If you have questions about your reimbursement amount, or did not receive a copy of your reimbursement form, please email BOEReimbursement@Michigan.gov, Subject: Presidential Primary.

We began processing Early Voting Grant 1 reimbursement submissions July 29. Please be on the lookout for any emails requesting additional information needed to process your reimbursement.

The submission period for Early Voting Grant August Wage reimbursement will open after the August Election is complete.

BOE invites all local election officials to join the Election Day Information Sharing Room. The purpose of this room is to share election-related information regarding incidents that have occurred, between local government officials, local election officials, and the Michigan Election Incident Response Team. You may log in and use the chat area to stay informed and report any election security related incidents directly or request guidance on security related issues. Information shared in this room should be considered raw information and should not be shared with the public or the media. The room will be open Aug. 6 from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. 

Attendance in this room is optional, and you may drop in and out throughout the day for updates. 

Access to this room is by request only. Once requested, you will receive a link to the session. The session will be on the Adobe Connect Platform which may require a download on your system. Select the following link to register for the upcoming Aug. 6 election.

Local Election Officials Election Day Information Sharing Room (csod.com)

PA 81 of 2023 amended the Michigan Election Law to allow jurisdictions to convene absent voter counting boards to process and tabulate absent voter ballots prior to Election Day. This replaced any “pre-processing” of absent voter ballots from previous election cycles. For those jurisdictions who are participating in the early processing and tabulation of AV ballots, please review the Guide now available in eLearning.

The deadline for a voter who returned their AV ballot for the August election to their clerk and wishes to spoil it has elapsed. Voters who have not yet returned their AV ballots have until 4 p.m. on Aug. 5, 2024, to spoil their ballot and request a new one.  Voters must do so by submitting a signed, written request to their clerk. A sample Request to Spoil AV Ballot form can be found in eLearning.  Following this deadline if voters require a new ballot to be issued, they have the option to surrender their AV ballot in the Election Day precinct or sign the Affidavit of Absent Voter and be issued a regular precinct ballot.

County clerks are required to initiate, and local clerks are required to complete, deceased voter cancellations with greater frequency as the election approaches.

When an election is more than 15 days away, these cancellations take place on a weekly or monthly basis, according to the schedule described in MCL 168.510.

Beginning 15 days before each August and November election until the day before each August and November election, county clerks must initiate the cancellation of deceased voters by close of business each business day by marking those voters Challenged-Deceased in QVF. Within 24 hours, the applicable city or township clerk will receive the QVF inbox notice and will complete the cancellation by marking those voters Cancelled-Deceased in QVF. (Note: for cancellations occurring the day before an election, the county clerk must contact the city or township clerk directly to ensure that the cancellation is finalized).

Additionally, if a city or township clerk receives notice that one of its electors has died and was issued an AV ballot, the clerk must make the clerk’s best effort to remove the AV ballot envelope or ballot from processing and to reject the ballot.

Finally, if the Secretary of State updates the QVF to cancel the voter registration of a deceased voter, an in-box notification will be sent within 24 hours to the city or township clerk. In these cases, no further action is needed by clerks.

MCL 168.720j requires that no later than Friday, Aug. 2, municipal clerks post on their municipality’s website, if available, where the precinct canvass of early votes for their municipality will take place and the time the canvass will begin. BOE has received questions about this rule given the use of combined early voting sites under county and municipal agreements. Even when a municipality is participating in a combined site, it is still responsible for informing voters of certain election-related activities, including this notice.