Debunking Michigan election misinformation: Late results, voting machines, more

Can homeless people vote in Michigan?

Yes! And that’s why you come across a lot of people whose voting records show they are registered in a park, on a street corner or in a church.

Homeless voters must obtain residency somehow, but like any voter in Michigan, they can sign an affidavit in lieu of showing photo ID.

A letter from a shelter or group working with the voter is acceptable as long as it includes their name and confirms they live in Michigan.

Like any other voter in Michigan, voters without a permanent address can register and vote on Election Day.

Is there a problem with Dominion voting machines in Michigan?

Only a few machines have a problem, and that’s a problem with ease of use – not with security.

The outage is occurring nationwide at Dominion’s voter assistance terminals the accessible machines designed to assist voters with disabilities. These are not tabulators; they are touchscreen voting devices that allow blind voters or others to use various assistive technologies to cast their votes.

However, all polling stations are legally obliged to collect VAT not all of them use Dominion machines. Dominion sales taxes are used in 65 of Michigan’s 83 counties.

According to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, sales taxes across the country have a programming error. If a voter uses the straight ticket voting option and then tries to vote between parties in certain individual races (which is allowed in Michigan), they will receive an error.

This can be solved by simply selecting candidates one by one during the vote.

Sales tax rates are critical to disabled voters, but each sales tax is used by only a few voters in each election, Michigan clerks say. The problem is annoying for those voters, but won’t affect most others.

Why are Michigan’s results taking so long to come in?

It is completely normal not to know the election results immediately after the polls close. Clerks say they are accurately counting thousands of ballots – millions across the state! – takes time. And in a very tight race, it is difficult to predict a winner based on statistical patterns.

The state has done a lot in recent years to try to speed up the processbut it’s not perfect. Clerks have the ability to process absentee ballots – removing them from the envelope, verifying the signatures and tabulating them, but NOT counting them – before Election Day, which many clerks, especially in large cities, require chosen.

We will probably get the results of those votes shortly after the polls close on Tuesday. But ballots that arrive on Election Day may take a while longer. There are some too possible bottlenecks in obtaining vote totals from counties to clerks. Counties that use Hart machines, such as Oakland County, can use modems — connected to secure cell networks, not the Internet — to send results quickly. In other places, results must be shared over a closed computer network (again, not on the Internet) and then verified with data from portable data storage devices brought in from the police station. That can take a long time.

It’s possible it mainly affects Macomb County could produce slow results this year. Warren, the largest city and third most populous in the state, has opted not to pre-process ballots.

Does Michigan have more voters than eligible people?

No. The claim has been made extensively debunked both by the state and by independent experts.

Michigan has 7.2 million active voters and 7.9 million residents over the age of 18. (We have a high registration rate, in part because anyone who gets a driver’s license is automatically registered to vote.)