Bethany Howard is frustrated that her brothers don’t want to vote. When she came face-to-face Tuesday with a group of Black men engaged in the election space, she sought advice on how to get them to the polls.
“They are tired of me coming to them,” Howard said of her brothers, 32 and 38, during a BridgeDetroit Community Conversation on democracy, voter access and information.
“Because you all look like my brothers, I want to know what I need to tell them to encourage them to go to the polls.”
Howard was among the Detroiters who heard from and interacted with Deputy Secretary of State Aghogho Edevbie, Detroit Deputy City Clerk Andre Gilbert II and Daniel Baxter, who oversees absentee voting for the Detroit Department of Elections as well as Detroit Action Executive Director Branden Snyder and WDET-FM reporter Bre-Anna Tinsley.
Snyder noted that while Black women are the most responsive voters in the country, participation from Black men lags.
“What’s the thing that allows us to be able to engage Black men in the civic process? One, they have to see themselves in the civic process,” he told Howard. “There are not enough spaces for Black men to be talking to Black men about politics.”
The newsroom event, moderated by BridgeDetroit reporter Malachi Barrett, was the first of four Community Conversations being held this year centered around topics that matter to Detroiters. Upcoming events will cover reparations and the I-375 project, housing and home repair and resources for refugees and immigrants.
Tuesday’s session gave an overview of absentee voting, election turnout and the impacts of legislation that allows for early voting and absentee ballot processing, among other things.
Snyder said he’s spent his adult life knocking doors, working on voter registration and other causes to encourage participation in elections. He said it’s important for prospective voters to know that the ballot box is “an opportunity to cast judgment on the decisions of people in power” and “an opportunity to rally around people who share our values.”
“If you care about 36th District Court (judges), State Circuit Court (judges) and all other courts, this is the opportunity,” he said. “If you want to be able to pass (policies) that allow us to have relief around housing justice, around tenants – these are the people making those decisions.
“And, even more importantly, every single candidate knows you’ve got power right now,” he added. “Black male votes are at a premium. If you want to wield that power, now is the time to do so.”
Edevbie urged voters to request absentee ballots early and to put them in a drop box. Local clerks can preprocess those ballots up to eight days before Election Day, he noted.
“It really transforms what was kind of an afterthought for many decades into a normal procedure,” he said.
In Detroit, Baxter said, about 205,000 residents requested absentee ballots for the 2020 presidential election. The city’s Department of Elections counted roughly 175,000 absentee ballots. The prevalence of absentee voting held true in the 2022 gubernatorial election, Baxter said.
“Prior to COVID, one-fourth of all votes cast in the city of Detroit were absentee ballots. The other three-quarters were at precincts,” he said. “What we’ve done since that time is we have made the absentee voting process more efficient in terms of securing the process.”
This year, Baxter said, Detroit will implement a new system that tracks the mailing of a ballot and when that ballot is returned to the Department of Elections. So individuals who vote absentee can go online, log in and get updates and notifications to track their ballot.
For the last presidential primary, the city implemented pre-tabulation and completed it nine days prior to the election and “changed the trend” of absentee voting. Preprocessing enables election workers to complete counting for 90 to 95% of the absentee ballots counted. For this election, the absentee count is anticipated to be completed by 8 or 9 p.m. as opposed to after midnight.
“We know that the 2024 presidential election is going to be a tight election,” Baxter said.
In 2020, there was “mayhem” and “chaos” from election deniers at the then TCF Center downtown, he said.
“Hundreds of challengers came to undermine and derail the process of absentee voting because the numbers flipped, exponentially,” said Baxter, explaining that absentee returns changed dramatically versus gradually based on how processing was structured then, and it made people question the vote.
“So what we want to do for the 2024 presidential election is make sure we have our returns in so there is no question about what we’ve done in terms of processing those absentee ballots,” he said. “We estimate that upwards of 100,000 to 110,000 people will vote by absentee ballot for the presidential election.”
To make absentee voting smoother, Baxter also flagged Proposition 22.2, which allows voters who intend to vote absentee in city or state elections to be placed on a permanent absentee ballot list and “you will get them forever and ever, amen.” This will help avoid having to submit an application after each election.
The city of Detroit, he said, already has 60,000 people queued up to receive their absentee ballots beginning this Saturday because they’ve already requested to be on the permanent absentee ballot.
For those who do vote and volunteer at the polls, audience member Michael Madigan asked what is being done to ensure there’s adequate staffing and that all polling places are open and operating on Election Day.
“I’m really concerned about the exodus of poll workers. A lot of people who have worked the polls year in and year out are just not doing it now,” he said.
Edevbie said some rules have been adjusted in recent years to provide more protections for election workers, including a law that allows for the prosecution of individuals who threaten poll workers. The state also set up the website michigan.gov/democracymvp to recruit poll workers statewide in areas of need, and it’s drawing in younger people for longer-term poll staffing.
Carol Adams raised complaints with the panel about her absentee ballot paperwork. She talked about a time when she received duplicate notices telling her she had to fill the form out and later, a letter from a company saying they made a mistake.
Baxter addressed the issue, saying when it was discovered the mailing company contracted by the department apologized to the city and sent apology letters to Detroit voters. But Adams said the explanation should have come from Detroit.
“There’s already been so much scamming and conspiracy,” she said.
Baxter and other panelists also addressed heightened suspicion and scrutiny tied to the 2020 election and what has been done since in Detroit to address it.
“We went back to the drawing board. We knew some things we didn’t do so well,” he said.
“People were concerned about that. That was an issue. So what we did in order to resolve that situation, we put checks and balances in place to make sure that even before election day all of our boards were balanced.”
Snyder said good things have happened since 2020 to improve the experiences voters are having and to ensure people are safe and protected.
Regardless of whether the clerk’s office had balanced poll books, he said, “we were still going to get that level of attack” on Black voters in Detroit.
“Part of the reason why … Black and brown voters make up the difference in swing states,” he said.
Edevbie also addressed the narrative that voter enthusiasm and turnout is a Detroit problem.
“So, it’s not just a Detroit problem. That’s something we really have to avoid,” he said. “We have a turnout problem statewide.
“In many communities, we have a turnout problem in urban America across the country. Part of it is when you look at who is not showing up: It’s Black and brown voters between the ages of 18 and 29,” he said. “It’s primarily people who are not in college, who are below the poverty line and interact with the government in often unfavorable and difficult ways.
“One of the things that really struck me is that I would talk to voters door-to-door and they had a perception – at least a good number of them – that if they voted for me it would be a favor to me. That’s not what voting is in my opinion. It’s your ability to hold your elected officials and government accountable.”
