First-time voters can now register, vote through mail

A group of Michigan’s county clerks has made it possible for first-time voters who registered by mail to cast absentee ballots, but Ingham County Clerk Mike Bryanton said no MSU students have signed on.

Under Michigan law, first-time voters who register by mail — including those who registered with a clipboard canvasser such as the ones on campus this fall — must vote in person.

Bryanton said the procedure is meant to protect against voter fraud, but it causes difficulties for students who have to travel back to their hometowns on Election Day.

The new partnership would change that.

“It allows … those students who have registered by mail the opportunity to participate in this election without having to go home,” he said.

Sixty of Michigan’s 83 county clerks have agreed to grant one another permission to verify a voter’s identity if they are temporarily living outside the community where they registered to vote, Bryanton said.

MSU students who registered by mail and can’t make it home on Election Day can go to Bryanton’s office in the Ingham County Courthouse, 341 S. Jefferson St., in Mason, or in the Veteran’s Memorial Courthouse, 313 W. Kalamazoo St., in Lansing, show him a valid form of identification and receive an absentee ballot from their hometown county clerk, without ever leaving Ingham County.

But so far, no one has taken advantage of the partnership. They have less than two weeks to do it, as the deadline to receive a mailed absentee ballot is Nov. 1.

“To date, I haven’t had anybody come to my office for me to verify their identity,” Bryanton said.

But criminal justice senior Bryan Miller said that’s probably only because they don’t know about it.

“It beats the hell out of going home,” he said. “I do think it’s a good idea.”

The partnership was created after two bills that proposed the same procedure, House Bills 4474 and 5739, stalled in the state Senate after passing in the House of Representatives. Bryanton said the partnership is a way to bypass the legislature in time for this year’s election.

“It’s just a stop-gap measure,” he said.

The partnership does not apply to city or township clerks, and East Lansing City Clerk Nicole Evans said she had not heard of the procedure.

First-time voters who want to request an absentee ballot by mail can visit www.macc-mi.org for a list of clerks participating in the partnership. Voters whose local county clerk has not signed on are ineligible to participate, Bryanton said.