Michigan raises alarms about how elections will be run

They are the administrators of democracy, making sure that elections are free, fair and efficient. They maintain the records of local government and are responsible for public access to those records, including births, deaths and the marriages in between.

And yet, nearly 10% of the 1,240 township clerk positions that are up for election this year in Michigan have no candidates willing to step up and fill them.

That’s according to Canton Township Clerk Michael Siegrist, who also serves as second vice president of the Michigan Association of Municipal Clerks (MAMC). In a social media post this month, Siegrist pointed to the situation as one that’s not been experienced before.

“What if I told you that 118 townships have nobody running for Clerk this year. We’ve never seen anything like this in history. 9.5% of all clerk races this year will have NOBODY elected,” he said, before posing a series of questions. “Why doesn’t anyone want to do this job? How does a state deal with such a massive labor shortage? Who will run elections in these communities?”

Siegrist went on to say that clerks in Michigan were increasingly being caught in the middle of what he referred to as the “voting wars,” in which partisans and activists “work the refs” by either overburdening the system with increasing demands to do more with less, or just outright attack them, both rhetorically and through intimidation and threats of violence.

“Anyone in MI who isn’t worried about the brain drain and loss of talent and experience is either dishonest or not serious,” Siegrist posted. “I hope this trend doesn’t continue. I hope the ‘voting wars’ stop. Future elections depend on serious legislators, serious activists, serious administrators, and serious elected officials understanding that the center must hold.”

A request for comment was made to the Michigan Department of State, but was not returned.

While various election reforms in the last six years have received approval from voters, they have also added to the duties and responsibilities of election administrators, which Siegrist says are almost always township clerks, making up more than 80% of all local election officials in the state.

According to the Michigan Townships Association, in addition to conducting elections and keeping voter registration files, township clerks are responsible for a myriad of other duties including maintaining custody of township records, recording, maintaining, and publishing board meeting minutes, preparing financial statements, and delivering tax certificates to the township supervisor and county clerk by Sept. 30.

However, there have been big changes to voting in the last few years that have impacted clerks’ job duties. Proposal 3 of 2018 and Proposal 2 of 2022 both passed with at least 60% of the vote and guaranteed the rights to same-day voter registration, nine days of early voting, and absentee voting, among other rights.

Siegrist told Michigan Advance that many jurisdictions simply are not able to accommodate the extra work load those changes require.

“There’s never been a high turnover in these positions historically,” he said. “In a lot of these smaller jurisdictions that are more rural, especially in northern Michigan, you get retirees who run for these jobs, and they’re not full-time jobs. There’s probably 900 jurisdictions in Michigan that don’t even have a full-time employee in the clerk’s office. It’s a part-time job. There’s a stipend. Maybe they make $10,000 a year. But that’s because that system was designed over the clerk really running really simple elections with simple equipment.”

Siegrist said that in addition to an increasing level of technological knowledge that’s required, there are usually longer hours, resulting in unintended costs such as additional child care that make the position difficult to recruit people into. And that’s not to mention the rising suspicion by many members of the public that massive fraud is taking place, regardless of whether there’s any actual evidence that’s true.

“And now it’s like, people want to talk about photo ID or they want to talk about the voter rolls or they want to talk about Dominion voting machines, which services 80% of the voters in Michigan,” he said. “They want to talk about all those things, and you’re like, ‘I really can’t talk about that. I’m so busy doing three people’s jobs for the single amount of money I made last year. And the MAMC warned everybody this was going to happen, that we were going to have a hard time retaining and recruiting individuals to do this job because of it. And we warned that it could potentially impact the quality of election administration.”

That warning came in the form of an advisory the association issued in December 2023, which urged municipalities to acknowledge that providing fair compensation for clerks and election officials was a critical need.

“In a functioning democracy, the role of election officials cannot be understated. We are the unsung heroes who work tirelessly behind the scenes to ensure the integrity of the electoral process. Paying election officials appropriately is not just a matter of financial compensation; it’s about upholding the very foundations of our democratic society,” states the advisory, which said inadequate compensation threatened to deter qualified professionals from holding those positions. That means increased turnover and a hit to public confidence in the efficient administration of elections.

To address the issue, the MAMC called upon municipalities to conduct a wage assessment to ensure election officials were compensated in-line with their counterparts in other departments, make an adjustment plan to provide for additional duties and responsibilities, and then ensure that appropriate support, resources, and benefits to were available to assist clerks and election staff in effectively managing the challenges of an extended election period.

“In summary, the pay and benefits for election officials are not expenditures but investments in the health of our democracy. It safeguards the integrity of elections, encourages dedicated professionals to serve, and upholds public trust. It is imperative that election officials are compensated appropriately and equitably, given the demands and responsibilities they shoulder,” said the advisory.

In response to the MAMC advisory, the Michigan Townships Association (MTA) posted a bulletin to its members saying that while they shared the concern that election officials should receive adequate compensation, the proposals being put forth were not in line with the legal requirements for what township clerks, who are paid by their municipalities, could be paid.

“It is our opinion that this would not be a lawful resolution or approach for a township to use regarding a township clerk’s salary of the office,” said the association. “In a township, the salary of the office of clerk as stated in the salary resolution for the office of clerk, is the ONLY compensation that a township clerk can receive for performing the statutory duties of the office of clerk.”

For this reason, the MTA said it encouraged townships to consider increasing the salary of the office of clerk, as opposed to additional compensation for increased election duties. Among the methods it suggested to do that were by a simple vote of the township board, or through the creation of a salary compensation commission.

Siegrist called the Michigan Townships Association’s response disappointing.

“What they don’t realize is by doing that, it sucked all the oxygen and momentum out of clerks advocating to their local township boards and to their township supervisors to actually get funding and to potentially get additional compensation to do the task that they’ve got,” he said. “I was really discouraged when they sent that notification out as a response to all the member communities. I thought it was irresponsible.”

Jenn Fiedler, the association’s communications director, told the Advance that the information they provided was accurate as what the Michigan Association of Municipal Clerks was advocating was not in line with the law.

“We have remained steadfast in our support, advocacy and resources for clerks in their ever-expanding duties, particularly for elections, and have encouraged township boards to review the salaries for this important elected office,” she said, and pointed to a cover story that ran in this year’s April/May edition of their monthly magazine, which was based on a resource toolkit that MTA prepared and shared with members via email, as well as a part of clerk/election curriculum at MTA workshops.

As to the vacancies on this year’s ballot, Michael Selden, director of the MTA’s Member Information Services, told the Advance that while that number may be higher than normal this year, that doesn’t mean the positions will go unfilled.

“There’s still a deadline coming up later this month to run as an independent on the ballot in November. You can also still run as a write-in for the August [primary],” he said.

But, Selden says ultimately if nobody is on the ballot, once the position is officially vacant on Jan. 2, a township board would then have 45 days to make an appointment and fill the vacancy. If no one steps forward for an appointment, he says the county clerk could then call for a special election. In his experience, Selden says they’ve never reached that point and he’s optimistic that won’t be the case this time either.

However, Selden does agree that the increasing duties which have been placed on clerks, as well as the more intense scrutiny of their work, are the main factors driving any lack of people stepping forward to do the job.

“Clerks take a lot of pride in their elections and how they run them and that they are safe and that they’re secure, and when they come under attack, it wears on you too,” he said. “Then there’s the extra things as far as absentee ballot voting, the nine days of early voting. I think you probably are getting a lot of clerks that are kind of burned out and aren’t running again.”

Selden says the MTA has advised townships that one thing they can to help alleviate the issue is to make the deputy clerk position full-time.

“Every township clerk is required to have a deputy and in many cases they’re only there in case the clerk is not available and they need somebody to come and sign a check or something. In many cases, that’s what the deputy is doing,” he said. “But, certainly, the township can encourage the clerk to find a deputy who’s more trained in the role or can look at it as more of a job instead of just, ‘I’m there just in case of emergency’, but bring in a deputy for working more hours and bring somebody in that can help take on some of those roles, even potentially outsourcing certain things like payroll.”

However, Selden acknowledged that hiring a full-time deputy will be difficult from a financial standpoint for many townships.

“There’s 1,240 townships, but roughly half of them have populations of under 2,000 people,” he said. “I mean, we have townships that have less than 200 people and some less than 100 people, and when you get into some of those smaller townships and maybe don’t have a lot of revenue, you don’t have a lot of people to choose from.”

But Siegrist says this is a systemic issue as even the largest municipalities aren’t looking to provide full-time deputy clerks.

Like democracy, election workers are under assault with many fearing for the future

“Look at Sterling Heights,” he said. “The president of the Michigan Association of Municipal Clerks, Melanie Ryska, doesn’t have a deputy clerk. Sterling Heights is the fourth-largest jurisdiction in Michigan. It is abundantly clear that everybody wants the system to just function. They want to see the big reforms. They want to see the increased voting rights, and expansion of access. But for some reason, they want us to do it with magic, and they want one person to administer it, and they want us to sacrifice our personal lives to do it.”

Siegrist believes that the lack of urgency toward resolving this issue makes it become a self-fulling prophecy.

“They’ll find some poor unsuspecting soul to do the job for four years, but guess what they’re probably not going to do? Run for reelection,” he said. “Do you really want every four years to hit the reset button…and then when individuals attack the election system we get surprised when they give up equipment to these conspiracy theorists illegally? It’s all brand new clerks. They’re low information clerks. They’re people who get put in those positions, who don’t know how to do the job, and don’t treat it professionally.”

That reference was to several instances arising out of the 2020 election in which local clerks illegally turned over voting tabulators to supporters of former President Donald Trump trying to validate his disproven claims of massive voter fraud.

“If you keep doing this refresh every four years with partisan hacks, they’re going to behave like this. That’s not a secure system,” said Siegrist. “They’ll find a warm body to fog a mirror and sit in that position. But what’s the quality of service? That’s my concern. Township clerk; it’s not the same job it was 20 years ago. So that 20-year-ago solution ain’t gonna cut it.”

Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan J. Demas for questions: info@michiganadvance.com. Follow Michigan Advance on Facebook and X.