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The four voters who cast two ballots in the August primary won’t face charges, Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido said Thursday.
The St. Clair Shores voters likely hadn’t intended to commit a crime, Lucido said in a news release, and the fact that it was flagged so quickly “demonstrates that election safeguards are effective and maintain overall integrity.”
“This situation highlights an opportunity for law enforcement and elections officials to review and train on this and other issues,” Lucido said in a short news release. “Macomb County clerks know the rules and follow them, they are diligent to safeguard our elections and keep the process tight.”
Lucido told The Detroit News on Thursday that police determined the voters in question believed they had spoiled their absentee ballots before voting in person.
Voting twice would be a felony, but it’s rare in Michigan, in no small part because of the complex systems in place to prevent it. Electronic pollbooks, the computers that are used to check in voters, flag when someone attempting to vote in person has already returned their absentee ballot; if the absentee ballot arrives after an in-person vote is cast, election workers are notified when they go to process the absentee ballot, which typically stops them from processing it.
In the St. Clair Shores case, County Clerk Anthony Forlini told Votebeat last week that the double votes were the result of a poll inspector putting the ballot through anyway, something he has promised would not happen again.
Forlini said Thursday the important thing is that people know clerks are paying attention and are prepared to take action if someone tried to vote twice in the county. He had not seen the police report Thursday afternoon but said he expected that Lucido would have gone “hard and heavy” if the double votes had been intentional.
“We’re keeping an eye on it and making adjustments to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he said, pointing to changes in communication and training. “It’s also a caution to others to pay attention, because this is not something we’re ever going to put up with.”
Macomb County is a political swing county that often draws national attention during presidential elections, but Forlini said he and his staff would be vigilant.
“No one is perfect, but no one is getting away with this,” he said.
A 2022 audit by the state auditor general found that of the more than 11.7 million votes cast in the state over several elections, 99.99% were not duplicates.
Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.
