In yet another ballot debacle, Lansing Township has sent nearly 100 absentee ballots to the wrong recipients, and only learned of the mistake after one ballot recipient informed township officials, WLNS reported.
Lansing Township resident Jerry Ward told reporters that he realized there was something wrong when he and his husband began filling out their respective ballots. Ward noticed that his ballot was addressed to the wrong voting precinct.
“So we turned it over and we started to look at the ballot and he had different names than I had on mine. OK, so we’re saying there’s something wrong here,” said Ward.
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The mistake would have cost him his vote had he assumed that the Township had accurately distributed the ballot.
“So that’s how we figured it out, and once we figured it out, it was just like, well, how can this be right?” Ward continued, noting his frustration that the Ingham County Clerk failed to reach out to voters who had received the wrong ballots.
Lansing Township Clerk Cortney Lightheart reportedly blamed the alphabetical system of ballot arrangement for the failure to properly address the ballots, leading to 97 ballots sent to the wrong precinct.
Public officials are desperately advising the general public to make sure that they have the right ballots before casting their votes.
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Democratic Ingham County Clerk Barbara Byrum called the mistake a “human error.”
Byrum added: “That employee is no longer working for Lansing Township Clerk’s office, and the clerk is following the guidance we have provided to make sure the voters are notified and a replacement ballot has been sent.”
Absentee ballots have become a flashpoint of the 2024 election.
As reported by The Midwesterner, Michigan state Rep. Brad Paquette, R-Berrien Springs, said his mother was sent a letter “paid for by The Voter Project Michigan … and authorized by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer,” But the letter was delivered to his grandmother’s home in Marquette, listing his mother’s maiden name. Paquette said his mother hadn’t lived at the address in 45 years, and has been married for 43.
“All Michigan voters can securely vote from home by using the enclosed application to request a vote-by-mail ballot,” the letter read. “Voting not only ensures your voice is heard but makes sure we have leaders who truly represent our communities and ideals.”
In the meantime, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is fighting multiple lawsuits in court that aim to purge the state’s bloated voter rolls of dead and ineligible voters.
Benson is named in an ongoing 2021 lawsuit from the Public Interest Legal Foundation that aims to remove over 26,000 deceased residents from the state’s active voter list, and another from the Republican National Committee filed in March targeting impossibly high voter registration numbers in 53 of Michigan’s 83 counties.
While there’s no dispute that Michigan’s 8.1 million registered voters represents 105% of the state’s voting age population, Benson’s Bureau of Elections argues federal election laws prevent officials from removing inactive registrations for two election cycles without personal contact from the voter.
A PILF investigation highlighted why that’s unlikely to happen for many, documenting numerous registered voters who died decades ago.
While Benson has dismissed the lawsuits as “baseless accusations that seek to diminish people’s faith in the security of our elections,” others have exposed how some are leveraging the situation in Detroit.
Ramon Jackson found numerous former Detroit residents including himself who were registered to vote years after moving away from the Motor City, including folks he knows have never voted in their lives.
Jackson’s investigation, which started with efforts to recall a city council member, revealed former Detroit residents who were registered as permanent absentee voters without their consent or permission at addresses that included vacant homes or where they no longer lived.