A nine-member East Lansing Election Task Force met for the first time Wednesday to discuss why voters were turned away from city polls in November’s election.

“The intent is for the city to control and correct anything possible,” said Susan Donnell, a task force member and East Lansing city clerk. “We want to resolve the matters the city has control of. We have to make sure it is done more efficiently.”

The meeting was sparked by November’s election that included a recount in the race for the 8th Congressional District seat, which featured a very narrow contest between state Sens. Dianne Byrum, D-Onondaga, and Mike Rogers, R-Brighton.

Accusations about open ballot boxes and invalid votes resulted in a recount, which ended with a Rogers win by a certified total of 160 votes.

Donnell was required to testify regarding some open ballot boxes, after problems with the tabulations occurred. She had said the boxes had to be opened to correctly count votes, and one box of votes was deemed uncountable due to a lost information tag.

The problems resulted in more confusion than anticipated.

“We were expecting a lot of confusion on Election Day due to the driver license law,” she said, referring to Rogers-sponsored legislation that requires voters to vote at addresses that appear on one’s driver’s license. “But despite having double the number of phones we were still overwhelmed.”

The task force was chosen for its expertise and to represent the East Lansing community, which consists of 18 voter precincts. While no major developments took place Wednesday, plans have been made for research into the subject and a series of meetings, including another session Tuesday.

Many of the task force members discussed problems with student voting, citing hundreds of students who were turned away Nov. 7 because of confusion in the voting process.

And those turned-away voters, many of whom were college students, could have made a major impact in the Byrum-Rogers race - which was dubbed one of the most crucial congressional campaigns in the country.

Plans for researching what went wrong last year include comparing the East Lansing strategy with other systems set up by cities with universities.

Jeff Ziarko, a task force member and director of university, governmental and budgetary affairs for ASMSU, MSU’s undergraduate student government, said there were clearly more election problems that occurred on campus than off.

“Some students waited in line for two hours to find out they were in the wrong place,” Ziarko said. “At best, it was an unpleasant experience. At worst, that student wouldn’t vote. We are looking to issue multiple sets of recommendations to the city, various legislative groups, MSU and one to voters in general.”

Though there were conceded difficulties in November’s election, they didn’t result in lower voter turnout. East Lansing’s turnout increased as predicted - a 55 percent turnout in comparison to the previous election in 1998, which sported 39 percent.

Despite the additional voters, problems were numerous for both students and permanent residents.

City officials found themselves swamped with phone calls on Election Day from citizens wondering if they were able to vote, if they were registered and looking for information about where they could actually go to cast their vote. Such problems led to people being turned away from the polls, confused and upset about being unable to vote, Donnell said.

She said roughly one-third of the registrations had some type of error. Voters had filled in their birth dates and addresses incorrectly or listed their hometown address, rather than an East Lansing residence. And these errors had to be followed up by the city clerk’s office.

The office also experienced problems dealing with the voter registration file, stating that registrations were sent back to them and had to be processed again, causing confusion. The task force members hope that more access to information regarding elections will allow the casting of votes to move smoother in the next election.

“Our election process was very challenging,” said Jean Golden, a member of the task force and assistant city manager. “We’re going to be a lot better locally, I can tell you that.

“We’re going to get all the information out.”

Michigan Secretary of State Candice Miller also has begun to look at reforms in the state voting process. And Miller spokeswoman Elizabeth Boyd said the East Lansing reforms are needed.

“It is worthwhile for them to look into that,” Boyd said Wednesday. “Cities like Ann Arbor didn’t experience any of these problems.”

Drew M. Harmon can be reached at harmondr@msu.edu.

Eric Morath can be reached at morather@msu.edu.