Ballots for 253 East Lansing absentee votes were lost in the mail after a post office mix-up prevented them from being delivered to voters this month.
City officials took the ballots to the East Lansing Post Office on Oct. 5. About a week later, phone calls from absentees who hadn't received their ballots plagued the East Lansing City Clerk's office, said City Clerk Sharon Reid.
Reid said she then asked officials at the East Lansing Post Office and the Collins Road Post Office in Lansing, what happened to the ballots and they all said they didn't know.
Reid said last Saturday, after two days of searching the post offices, she began reissuing 215 ballots by priority mail, spending about $835. This ensured that voters would be able to return them in time for the Nov. 2 election.
About 30 other ballots were reissued individually through phone requests, she said, adding that the rest were reissued through relatives of voters who swore a legal oath to deliver the ballots personally.
"Everyone has the right to vote in Michigan," she said, "We took the step to reissue everyone's ballots because everyone's vote is important to us."
Although there have been calls of concern from voters with missing ballots, state officials and election experts say that this incident will have no effect on the voting process in Michigan this November.
"It is an isolated situation in East Lansing," said Secretary of State spokeswoman Kelly Chesney. "We haven't had similar instances anywhere else in the state."
Chesney said that measures were taken beforehand to prevent East Lansing absentee voters from being able to vote twice in error.
Reid said every voter registration application has a ballot identification number that will be assigned to the voter's name. If for any reason a second registration card is given to a voter, the original ballot number will be crossed out and the first ballot will be useless.
Local experts agreed with officials, claiming there is no reason to be alarmed.
"I don't think this will disrupt the Michigan election, because the problem was caught early," said MSU College of Law Associate Professor Brian Kalt. "I expect everyone to get their ballots back this week."
