LANSING — Voters in more than 100 townships across Michigan might not be able to cast ballots for a key office next month.
In places like Ingham County’s Wheatfield Township and Branch County’s Noble Township, along the Indiana border, there are no candidates for clerk. In both, the current clerks have decided against seeking re-election and no one, as of early October, has filed to run.
“I don’t really have anyone who is standing in line behind me to take the job,” said Wheatfield Township Clerk Denise Kapp, a Republican. “I will just do my best to continue in accordance with what the law states to do.”
That is, until Dec. 31, when her time as clerk ends regardless of whether there’s a replacement. By one estimate, Wheatfield Township is among the 10% of the roughly 1,200 Michigan townships that don’t have a clerk candidate on the ballot. Kapp is simply retiring, something she considered before the 2020 election.
Township clerk might seem a small position in the grand scheme of the thousands of government officials in state and local government, but the local level is where Michigan’s election system is run. And it’s run by local clerks. In 2020, townships were home to 5.1 million people, good for nearly 52% of the state’s population, according to the Michigan Townships Association.
“Nobody seems to get this,” said Michael Siegrist, Canton Township clerk and a board member of the Michigan Association of Municipal Clerks. “Nobody realizes that the election framework is crumbling.”
MORE: What’s on your November ballot? Here’s a breakdown of all Lansing area races, proposals
Siegrist, a Democrat who posted the 10% figure to social media this year, said the election system isn’t in immediate danger for November, but added that a township clerk’s job extends beyond the state’s increasingly complex election system. Clerks also assemble the township board’s meeting agenda, have financial responsibilities and preserve township bylaws, ordinances, agreements and other legal documents, in addition to handling public records requests.
But this isn’t just a township problem, or even a Michigan problem.
In May, the Brennan Center for Justice, a national nonpartisan law and policy institute, released the results from a survey of more than 900 local election officials across the country.
Nearly 40% reported being harassed, verbally abused or threatened. A staggering 70% said they felt threats against election workers had increased since 2020. The survey also found that 7% were unlikely to be in the job for the Nov. 5 election and one-in-five said they were unlikely to remain after the 2026 midterm election.
“The human body can sprint for a short duration of time,” Siegrist said. “But you can’t sprint a marathon and I think that’s the challenge right now.”
Changing job responsibilities don’t always bring more funding
Noble Township Clerk Heidi Metzger, like Kapp, isn’t leaving the job because of election-related stressors.
She became clerk about a decade ago, she said, after having been the deputy clerk working for her father-in-law, who decided not to run again. Early on, she could work part time from home, make some money and still raise her kids as a stay-at-home mom.
“It was perfect for me,” said Metzger, a Republican.
The job, and its responsibilities, have changed over her 10 years in office. And while she said the election work has changed the most, the wide range in clerk responsibilities means small changes can cascade into others.
“I think it’s become more involved,” she said. “I think the state has been asking more and more of the clerks, in terms of paperwork and stuff like that.”
She pointed to the CARES Act passed during the pandemic as a main stress point as she tried to navigate the bureaucratic process and paperwork needed to get federal funds.
Noble Township is among the state’s smaller municipalities. Metzger said it has about 400 voters. The small township’s limited budget means she’s had to work without some resources most businesses consider basic, like a photocopier, which makes responding to public records requests more challenging. The annual salary for the job, Metzger said, is $4,000.
About 83% of clerks who responded to the Brennan Center study said their annual budgets need to increase in the next five years to meet administration and security requirements. And 41% said they’ve been denied a budget request that would have been used for staff or wages.
Metzger, Kapp and Siegrist said they’ve been lucky to work in townships where the board and other public officials support them. Siegrist said that’s not always the case and some clerks work in townships where a trustee might push back or a “turf war” with another elected official can create problems.
Siegrist said local communities need to fund clerks’ offices and the profession. More funding can let clerks increase pay, retain staff and keep technology up to date.
“You can phone the job in,” he said. “You can do early voting on the third floor of City Hall … Or you can have someone out there who is partnering with the library or school district to promote those events.”
Expanded voting access means more challenges
Starting on Saturday, Oct. 26, all Michigan townships, cities and villages will start nine days of early voting and by the time those voting locations open, more than 1.2 million ballots will have been cast.
Michigan is just a few years into an expanded voting system, one that since 2018 now includes same-day voter registration, no reason absentee voting and more than a week of early voting in person.
Kapp said allowing voters more options and opportunities to cast their ballot “is ultimately a good thing,” but it comes with challenges for clerks.
For example, she said the nine days of early voting, the minimum that must be offered, is like having nine Election Days in a row before running another Election Day operation. Even if turnout at early voting centers is expected to be low — it was about 1% in the August primary — clerks must staff the operations with enough workers to handle eight hours of voting each day.
The state legislature made $30 million in grants available for the added costs. Cities, townships and villages are also able to partner with neighboring jurisdictions to run voting centers together.
State funds and working with a neighboring clerk’s office can help, but election workers have for weeks already been under pressure to keep up with voter activity. By law, a clerk’s office must make an absentee ballot available to a voter within 24 hours of a request.
As of Oct. 21, clerks have sent 2.2 million absentee ballots to Michigan voters and received more than 1.2 million completed ballots, according to the state’s newly launched Michigan Voting Dashboard. Voters have until 5 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 1 to get their absentee ballot request to their local clerk.
Siegrist said a clerk and their township can can fall behind and end up in the wrong solely “based on the laws of physics and mathematics.”
But even when polls close at 8 p.m. on Nov. 5, clerks will have days or weeks of election work remaining, in addition to their other responsibilities.
“It’s very, very hard to stop sprinting after a marathon and then hit a routine pace afterward,” Siegrist. “There is a substantial amount of burnout.”
Kapp is running her final election as Wheatfield Township clerk. She said there’s going to be a steep learning curve for whoever steps into the job and she had hoped to help them start before her term ended. While that hasn’t happened yet, she said the offer will stand once the township board appoints her replacement.
“The clerks with whom I’m familiar, we all have a very solemn perspective on the job we do,” she said. “We’re public servants for a reason.”
Contact reporter Matt Mencarini at mjmencarini@lsj.com.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Michigan township clerk vacancies concern officials
EMEA Tribune is not involved in this news article, it is taken from our partners and or from the News Agencies. Copyright and Credit go to the News Agencies, email news@emeatribune.com Follow our WhatsApp verified Channel
