In Michigan We Trust / Counting the Vote
From your precinct to statewide certification, the count is bipartisan, sealed, and on the record.
Michigan uses paper ballots statewide. If you vote in person early or on Election Day, you feed your own ballot into the tabulator at your precinct. If you vote absentee you submit your own ballot by mail, at a drop box or your clerk’s office. Your paper ballot stays sealed and trackable, in case a recount, audit or legal challenge needs it.
Your vote is registered on the tabulator’s memory card. The machine is not connected to the internet when votes are being cast or counted. Your original paper ballot drops into a sealed container inside the machine.
After polls close, inspectors from both parties close out the tabulators together to access the memory cards. The machine prints its results on the spot, and every election worker present signs the printed tape to verify. The machine is not connected to the internet when votes are cast or counted.
The local clerk’s office is the first stop for your vote. Poll workers from both parties ride together to transport sealed ballot containers, sealed bags with memory cards, signed printed tapes of precinct results, and sealed envelopes containing statements of returns.
Your sealed ballot, your precinct’s memory card, and the signed result tape all go to your local clerk. They upload your precinct’s vote totals, post unofficial results, and forward the sealed materials on for bipartisan county-level review.
Results can’t be released before 8 p.m., so no one casts a vote knowing how others already voted. Releasing results early is a felony under Michigan law.
A bipartisan county board of canvassers, two Republicans and two Democrats, double-checks the precincts’ results. They review poll books, check seals, and confirm totals. Canvassers may fix clerical errors, but never override results.
Once all 83 counties certify their election results, a bipartisan state board combines the totals and certifies Michigan’s election results within 20 days.
Canvassing boards must certify the results shown in the official returns.
At every handoff — precinct to clerk, clerk to county canvass — the paper ballot stays sealed and trackable, in case a recount, audit or legal challenge needs it.
Did you know?The U.S. Constitution gives states the right to administer their own elections. Michigan decentralizes this right further — all the way down to your local neighborhood. Your election is run by one of over 1,600 local county, city, and township clerks, making Michigan's election system one of the most decentralized in the nation.
