Election Day might be over in Michigan, but the long and anxious wait to see who will become the next president continues.
During a press conference Wednesday, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said there are still tens of thousands of ballots that need to be counted. Many of these ballots come from large cities, including Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo.
“Now, these ballots were cast by tens of thousands of Michigan citizens who have the right to have their vote counted,” Benson said. “And we’re going to make sure that right is protected. We’re going to ensure that the results of our elections accurately reflect every single ballot vote that was cast.”
This comes as a declared winner for Michigan in the presidential and U.S. Senate race has yet to be projected.
The continued count of casted ballots didn't stop President Donald Trump from pre-emptively declaring victory at about 2:30 a.m. Wednesday morning.
Senate candidate John James also retweeted an account that falsely declared himself the victor prematurely as well.
Benson said she pushed for legislation over the summer that would allow for election officials to preprocess ballots, eliminating the wait seen now. This call for change, nevertheless, was not met.
“Rest assured,” she said. “We’re focused on counting every single ballot.”
Most, if not all, of the outstanding votes in Michigan come from absentee ballots, Benson said. Yesterday, Michigan Department of State spokesperson Jake Rollow said that 3.5 million absentee ballots had been requested. 3.1 million had been returned.
The election process remains very decentralized in Michigan, Benson said. That remains one of the reasons why results have taken longer to report in this state than it has in others.
“We have 1,520 local election jurisdictions within 83 counties, and that counting process happens on the local level,” she said. “So we’re also very mindful of that process. It’s another reason why it has always taken several hours, if not days, for results to come through our state.”
Benson said there should be a clearer picture as to what votes will look like later today.
“I’ll continue to expect that we’ll have more information throughout the day,” she said. “And, as I mentioned last night, I’m optimistic that by the end of the day, the majority of our ballots will be tabulated, and we’ll be much closer to having a full, if not a full and complete unofficial result to announce at that point.”
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