Here We Go Again: Michigan Official Doesn't Expect State's Results to Be Certified Until After Election

I meant that. The "Here We Go Again" part.

As was the case in Michigan in 2020, the state's secretary of state said on Sunday's episode of CBS's "Face the Nation" that she doesn't expect the 2024 election results in the Wolverine State to be certified until November 6, the day after the election. Why not, you ask? "High turnout." Yeah.

As NY Yankee Hall-of-Famer Yogi Berra might say, “It's like déjà vu all over again.”

Michigan SOS Jocelyn Benson explained:

In 2020 we had the results of our highest turnout election in Michigan history within 24 hours of the polls closing. The unofficial results were completed by 8 p.m. Wednesday, so we’re tracking that again this year.

Not to nitpick, but it seems reasonable to me that after the 2020 election fiasco — valid or otherwise — a key swing state like Michigan, after four years, would have found a dependable way to speed up its ballot-counting process, particularly in light of more and more voters casting their ballots prior to election day.

While Benson also said she's optimistic that this year's results could be certified sooner than in 2020, she stressed: "That said, we will always prioritize accuracy and security over efficiency."

The Michigan SOS said without hesitation that she will certify the results of the presidential election, regardless of who wins. While current polling suggests the key state couldn't be closer, Monday's RCP Average shows Trump with a slight lead in all seven swing states.

As I've written previously, I'm not in the prognostication business, but I do believe that if the race remains this tight through November 5, the former president stands an excellent chance of winning the Electoral College vote, which he did in 2016, despite Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote by roughly 3 million votes.

With charges and countercharges from each side warning that the other side will attempt to interfere with the election results continuing to fly back and forth, here are two perfect examples.

As RedState reported last Tuesday, Stuart Stevens of the infamous Lincoln Project and a former campaign strategist for Mitt Romney's failed 2012 presidential run suggested that Trump Republicans could "burn down" election centers in an effort to disenfranchise black voters. No, really.

And I think that what is really the fear here is - put yourself in the mindset that the Trump campaign really doesn’t think it can win, either the popular vote or the Electoral College. You look at this campaign. It makes no sense. He’s not trying to add voters," Stevens said.
[...]
And if they can go in and they can violently disrupt these counting centers, how will states be able to certify elections? You burn down a county center in Arizona. How does the governor certify those elections?

TDS on steroids.

On the other side, as reported by the Military Times in early October, Trump posted on Truth Social that the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, a law designed to ensure that service members and overseas Americans can vote via absentee ballot, will be used by Democrats to “cheat.”

Actually they are getting ready to CHEAT! They are going to use UOCAVA to get ballots, a program that emails ballots overseas without any citizenship check or verification of identity whatsoever. [They] want to dilute the TRUE vote of our beautiful military and their families.

Experts knowledgeable about the process told the Military Times that cheating would be very difficult, if not impossible, given the nature of the system.

The Bottom Line

Regardless of the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, just 15 days from now as I write, one side or the other is likely to go off the rails after the final results are announced.

I say this as the messenger only, but given the reaction to the 2020 election and its aftermath, culminating with the January 6 Capitol riot, nothing will surprise me this go-around, either.

Editor's Note: This article was updated post-publication to reflect that Benson is Michigan's Secretary of State rather than Attorney General. We apologize to our readers for the oversight.