Clerk sends conflicting info on straight-ticket voting

Waterford Township Clerk Sue Camilleri is asking absentee ballot voters to call her office if they are confused after she sent them conflicting instructions regarding their ability to vote straight-ticket.

Federal courts recently suspended a Michigan law that would have banned straight-ticket voting in the state for the first time in 125 years, but Camilleri said her office had already scratched out straight-ticket instructions printed on ballot secrecy sleeves mailed to voters.

Rather than pay for 10,000 new sleeves, the Republican official included a separate set of instructions with ballots she mailed out to voters, telling The Detroit News she hoped to save taxpayers money with the move.

“Some people will be confused by it,” Camilleri acknowledged Tuesday, “and hopefully they have the sense to call us.”

Marcia Karwas of Waterford Township said she noticed the “clearly contradictory” instructions she received with her ballot and contacted the clerk’s office, but she’s worried other voters may not do the same.

“You take out the little sleeve first, and that’s what we read first,” she said. “If you don’t pay attention, you might not even notice the other (instruction) sheet was different.”

Karwas, a 62-year-old instructor at Eastern Michigan University, said she was very careful to make sure she did not spoil her ballot by filling it out incorrectly.

“My parents are 93 and 89,” she said. “I told my dad, ‘Don’t vote until I figure it out.’ ”

The township on Tuesday afternoon put up a message on its Facebook page clarifying that straight party voting is allowed and urged voters to use the “green instruction sheet” as they fill out absentee ballots.

The Michigan Bureau of Elections was not aware of the issue but will contact the Waterford clerk to find out more and ensure voters are given proper instructions, said Secretary of State spokesman Fred Woodhams. He was not aware of similar issues in other parts of the state.

Camilleri said she decided against ordering new secrecy sleeves because the long-term fate of straight-ticket voting remains uncertain pending the outcome of the ongoing legal challenge.

“I don’t know which way it’s going to go,” she said. “I didn’t want to order 10,000 secrecy sleeves when there was probably a fifty-fifty chance they’d be no good either.”

Michigan’s Republican-led Legislature voted to ban straight-ticket voting in late 2015, arguing it would encourage a more informed electorate by forcing voters to pick individual candidates rather than a single party.

Detroit U.S. District Court Judge Gershwin Drain suspended the law in late July, ruling it could increase voter wait times and disproportionately burden African-American voters who tend to live in precincts with longer Election Day lines.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals panel upheld the suspension, and the U.S. Supreme Court on Sept. 9 declined to hear an emergency appeal by Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson and Attorney General Bill Schuette.

Camilleri said her office scratched absentee voting instructions off the ballot sleeves early this year after Snyder signed the ban into law. A lawsuit was filed in May and straight-ticket voting remained in legal limbo for several months as the court battle played out.

“Every clerk was faced with uncertainty about how to deal with it, and each probably handled it a little bit different,” Camilleri said. “But the intent is to keep the voters educated, and I think I did my best.”

Lansing City Clerk Chris Swope, who works with the Michigan Association of Municipal Clerks, said he was not aware of conflicting absentee ballot instructions going out in any other part of the state but acknowledged that clerks were forced to play a waiting game during the straight-ticket legal saga.

“I just didn’t do anything with the instructions until it was settled,” said Swope, who has traditionally printed instructions separately from the secrecy sleeve.

Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum, a Democratic straight-ticket voting advocate who has criticized attempts to ban the practice, called the Waterford Township absentee ballot issue “concerning.”

“As clerks, we need to make sure the election process is as straight-forward and fair as possible,” she said. “Having conflicting information does not make it clear to voters.”

Elsewhere, the straight-ticket legal saga may have delayed ballot printing by “a day or so” in Kalamazoo County, Clerk Tim Snow said.

While some local clerks are just now sending out absentee ballots in the county, he said ballots for military members and overseas voters were mailed by Sept. 24, the legal deadline.

“It was just waiting, fixing a minor problem and then we were ready to go,” Snow said. “Of course, everybody hit the printers at the same time and that might have been a minor issue.”

joosting@detroitnews.com