In November, Detroit voters are expected to cast absentee ballots in droves, but some voting advocates worry that the city hasn’t done enough to get ready for the onslaught.
Unlike most jurisdictions in Michigan that have been using new envelopes to mail absentee ballots — redesigned by the state to help the U.S. Postal Service easily identify and swiftly process them — Detroit has been using an older version. In addition, advocates, already concerned about the small number of ballot drop boxes around the city for the August primary, want to see more added for November’s election, but it is not clear how many more Detroit plans.
For the primary, Detroit had two drop-off boxes for more than 480,000 registered voters.
“It was not anywhere near enough,” said Aghogho Edevbie, the Michigan director for All Voting is Local, a national voting rights advocacy group.