Novi Times

Counting absentee and mail-in ballots in next month's general election, especially given a decision to allow processing of ballots only one day before Nov. 3, could strain county clerks' offices in Michigan, Bloomfield Township's retiring clerk said during a recent radio interview with guest host Guy Gordon.

"You can only count the ballots on Election Day," Bloomfield Township Clerk Jan Roncelli said during "The Frank Beckmann Show." "And that's a difficult day to count. Some of us are doing 18,000, 20,000. The larger communities -- even the smaller communities that are doing 5,000 and 10,000 ballots -- that's a lot to count in a day."

The electorate also has voiced confusion about what "early voting" actually means, Roncelli said.

"We have phone calls every day. People say, 'I hear that I can early vote in the clerk's office'," Roncelli told Gordon. "Well, they can get a ballot and they can vote and they can drop it in our box, but we don't have early voting. They're literally not putting it in a tabulator. And that's a misnomer now that's going around."

Voters can seal their ballots and mail them in or drop them off at any time at their local county clerk's office, but they will not be counted before election day, Roncelli said.

"But we don't have early voting, where they can literally put it in the tabulator themselves," she said on the radio program. "One of my residents said, 'My friend just called me from Virginia and she just did early voting.' I said, 'Well, that's great. And you can do absentee voting here. But there's a difference between that and early voting.' So there is some confusion there right now."

Roncelli was first elected Bloomfield Township Clerk in 2004, having previously served on the township's board of trustees. In 2011, she was appointed to represent Michigan as the local election official on the Standards Board for the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, a position she still holds.

Roncelli announced in that she will retire after her current term as township clerk. Republican Bloomfield Township police officer Tom Smyly and Democrat attorney Martin Brook are running in next month's general election to replace Roncelli.

Late last month, Michigan Republicans sued Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to stop a decision released earlier in September that would have strong implications on absentee voting. The decision would allow absentee ballots postmarked by Nov. 2 to be counted even if they arrive up to 14 days after the election.

The Michigan Republican Party and the Republican National Committee, in their Oct. 1 request for declaratory judgment, called for the decision to be reversed.

"There is no shortage of challengers to that decision," Gordon said on the show. "And I think it's going to have to go to the Supremes [Michigan's Supreme Court] and darn quickly."

It isn't only up to the courts to decide, Roncelli added.

"At least the Legislature can join in because there is a separation-of-powers issue there where you have a judge writing law," Gordon said on the air. "And the constitution is clear that election law, that is in the purview of the legislature, not the judiciary. And so we will wait for that to be resolved."