RESOURCES:
Washtenaw County Elections Department
August 5, 2025 Unofficial Election Results
TRANSCRIPTION:
David Fair: This is 89.1 WEMU, and I'm David Fair on a post-election Wednesday. It was a modest election in Washtenaw County Tuesday. Nonetheless, it takes a massive effort to pull off an election and the preparations to make sure things go as smoothly as possible begin months in advance. So, how did it all go in the lead-up and follow-through for the August 5th election? There's no one better to ask than our guest. Lawrence Kestenbaum is Clerk and Register of Deeds in Washtenaw County, and the Elections Division falls under his purview. Thank you so much for taking time out for us today!
Lawrence Kestenbaum: I'm glad to be here!
David Fair: By election standards, this was a rather small one. But as I mentioned, a lot of work and preparation goes into it. When did the Elections Division begin working on this August election?
Lawrence Kestenbaum: Well, we have to have ballots ready for absentee at 45 days for the election under state and and federal law. And so, the programming of ballots, the preparation and so forth, it goes it goes back, like for example for the upcoming November election. We've already started getting ballots ready, getting programming done, and so forth for the election coming up this November.
David Fair: It's a pretty big turnaround, right?
Lawrence Kestenbaum: Yeah, and part of it, also, there's the finalization of exactly what and who are on the ballot, as well as programming, so that all the votes are counted correctly and in the right, for example, straight-party votes or overvotes or whatever, all of those things have to be separately programmed. And then, the ballot is proofread extensively by every local clerk, by every candidate listed on the ballot, and so on, by the election commission. And it's very rare, but it does happen for errors to survive that process. But the ballots are printed and distributed to the jurisdictions. And then, we now have early voting, which is a relatively new thing, and that is growing in popularity. And early voting requires the county to have poll workers there in a statewide election for nine days. That means, at every early voting site, there have to be a certain number of poll workers. So, it's a big effort. Absolutely, it's a big effort! And we have, in a general election, we have brought something on the order of about 2,000 poll workers in Washtenaw County, including the early voting poll workers
David Fair: I'm glad you brought that up because poll workers, as I understand it, are becoming increasingly difficult to find and to keep on.
Lawrence Kestenbaum: Well, I know that there are areas that are having more trouble. In Washtenaw County, I can't say that we've had much difficulty recruiting them, but we do have to make an effort. But it's not really as difficult as I hear about it. I mean, very often, reporters will call me and say, "Aren't people terrified to be poll workers, given COVID, given violence, given technological changes?" But, in Washtenaw County, we have to be able to sustain our poll workers. We don't have a shortage here. And it's highly educated community, and it's something that's a big commitment of time. In terms on Election Day, you're getting there at six in the morning and working often times until ten or eleven o'clock at night. But the people are willing to do it. And the difficulty we have sometimes have is poll workers have to represent both parties. Every sensitive task that is done in an election has to be done, under the law, by two poll workers of different party affiliations So, in Ann Arbor, it's easy to find Democrats to be poll workers. It's a little harder to find Republicans. So, I have been to the Republican County Convention a number of times to basically make the case that--maybe not the people there at the convention, but their families or their friends and so forth who are Republicans-- to urge them to step up and be poll workers. Poll workers are not volunteers. They're paid per hour, typically $15 an hour, not only for Election Day but also for dates of training.
David Fair: We're talking about Tuesday's election in Wastenaw County with Lawrence Kestenbaum on 89.1 WEMU. He is Clerk and Register of Deeds. Let's dive specifically into yesterday. The total and final vote tallies from Dexter came in very early. Then, there was a period of hours and hours waiting for absentee ballots to be counted in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti Township. If I understand it correctly, the new election law that was in effect allowed the Elections Division to start counting absentees ballots earlier. Do I have that right?
Lawrence Kestenbaum: Yeah. We didn't do that this time, but one problem that we had yesterday was a power outage. And the City of Ann Arbor, the clerk's office, had no power for, I believe, more than an hour, late in the day on Election Day. And their phones were also out for a period of time, and this is the sort of thing we've had. The state-sponsored tabletop exercises that talk about "what do you do if?" And one of the questions was, "The power goes out of your at your location." The power went out at the county building where I work for maybe less than a minute. But it remained off at City Hall, like I said, for over an hour. And that was a very frustrating thing, in terms of being able to communicate with all of the local clerks and so forth and voters who had questions or who had issues or needed to reach City Hall. They couldn't do it for that period of time.
David Fair: So, that adds stress upon stress. I'm curious. I know you were into the office into the wee hours of the morning because you and I were emailing each other. As you left, were you satisfied with process and procedure?
Lawrence Kestenbaum: Yeah. The thing that has really changed the whole center of elections--of a relatively small election like this--is that we now have what are called the permanent absentees. In the City of Ann Arbor, something like 26,000 voters receive a ballot in the mail for every election. They don't have to apply for it. Once they want to get on the list, they permanently received those ballots. And I think that that bolsters the turnout in a low-turnout election. Out of those 26,000 people in the City of Ann Arbor, about 18,000 of them voted. And the other thing is that they will often time, again, now under revised election law, if they receive a ballot in the mail, it comes with an envelope to mail it back or they could bring it into an early voting site or to their precinct on Election Day and put that ballot to the tag you ordered directly. That did not use to be possible. The other aspect of this is that when you have like a standalone, special election like this as in Ypsilanti Township and in Dexter and in Ann Arbor and certain school districts, where there's just one thing on the ballot, it's a much more costly endeavor now than it used to be. And we're having another, largely, a special election in November of this year, because of the Washtenaw Intermediate School District having a proposal on the ballot throughout almost the whole county, as well as the South Lyon School District, which includes the northeastern area of the county and the Stockbridge School District in the northwest. So, almost the entire county will be voting, and the cost of this election, it used to be that we would figure an election cost about $1200 a precinct. But now, a countywide election is right around a million and a half dollars.
David Fair: So, with that in mind, we only have about a minute left together, but I do want to ask this question and take that a step further. Given the increasing costs and difficulties of putting on an election, do you prefer the manner in which they're set up now with May, August, and November, with the occasional special election thrown in, or would you like to see consolidation of election dates?
Lawrence Kestenbaum: We've already had some consolidation. The law has changed over time, but what we as county clerks and election officials would really like to see if the primary moved from August to May and have just two elections a year, May and November, everything that's regularly scheduled considered into that, any special election, if there's an emergency special election be called by the governor, the proliferation of additional elections is not a good thing. It is costly, and I'm always advising groups, the local governments and agencies that want to have an election, to move to even-year August or November--at this point, hopefully in the future, May. The Washtenaw Community College has had the idea of putting something on the ballot in May of next year, and we have persuaded them to hold that off until August of '26 when there will be an election going on anyway. It's a question of spending a million and a half dollars or getting it for free. You would think that would be a simple question.
David Fair: We have to bring our conversation to an end, but I thank you so much for the information! That is Washtenaw County Clerk and Register of Deeds, Lawrence Kestenbaum. Lawrence Kestenbaum, right here on your community NPR station, 89.1 WEMU-FM, Ypsilanti.
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