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not sure what, though. It's election nattering, mostly with respect to voter turnout....
JM sent out an email today, with "estimated" voter numbers attempting to explain why we should be able to lobby for the AV board to just be the four of us who worked yesterday. She's not wrong, because I think we could handle up to about 1100 ballots without running late - we'd have to start earlier than we did this time, but we didn't show up until 9am.
What I have trouble with is her numbers. She was trying to say that, based on the last gubernatorial election (in 2018), we'd get about 600 AV ballots in November. We processed over 500 yesterday, in the primary, so I see a couple of problems with her assumption.
My feeling is that we'll probably get about 800 AV ballots in November. Unless something big happens between now and then....
JM sent out an email today, with "estimated" voter numbers attempting to explain why we should be able to lobby for the AV board to just be the four of us who worked yesterday. She's not wrong, because I think we could handle up to about 1100 ballots without running late - we'd have to start earlier than we did this time, but we didn't show up until 9am.
What I have trouble with is her numbers. She was trying to say that, based on the last gubernatorial election (in 2018), we'd get about 600 AV ballots in November. We processed over 500 yesterday, in the primary, so I see a couple of problems with her assumption.
- There's *always* better voter turnout in November than in August. Always. Absentee Ballots or live floor, there's always more voters in November, usually 30-50% more. (so 620-750 AV Ballots)
- Absentee voter numbers are way up since 2019. While that is partially attributable to the pandemic, Michigan made some changes in the Absent Voter rules in 2019 which made it trivial to get a AV ballot. It used to be that you had to have a reason when you filled out the request form ("I expect to be unable to make it to my assigned polling place on Election Day" was one of the ticky boxes, so the bar was really quite low) -- but the new rule is "you have to fill out the form correctly", and since it's the same information you'd have to fill out to vote in person....
Using the voter turnout numbers from a 2018 election to predict a 2022 election without making some sort of allowance for the rule change is not going to be terribly useful. (we processed 1200 ballots in November of 2020; gubernatorial election turnout is usually 60-75% of the preceding presidential election, so 720-900 AV Ballots)
My feeling is that we'll probably get about 800 AV ballots in November. Unless something big happens between now and then....
