LANSING, Mich. (MIRS News) – Out of 83 county clerks in Michigan, nearly two dozen have left office since November 2020, according to Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum, who testified before Tuesday’s House Elections Committee.

Byrum, who testified with Saginaw County Clerk Vanessa Guerra, said that’s in part due to a large workload for clerks who are responsible for campaign finance enforcement and serving as their jurisdiction’s chief elections official.

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That role includes supervising elections, training election workers and programming tabulators, “all in about 15 days.” After an election, she said the process of certifying and recounting results is lengthy, and it’s likely that county clerks are still working on an election 60 days after Election Day.

Then, they restart for the next election. Byrum said she has just begun programming tabulators for Ingham County’s May election.

Guerra said at this point, there are elections held nearly every May, August and November, and county clerks work with their local counterparts on a daily basis.

In many cases, clerks who ran for the position didn’t recognize that they would have special elections three times a year, and oftentimes became the “dumping ground” in their jurisdiction, adding on tasks like payroll and helping with the treasury.

“As their payload gets more full, they’re going to start leaving,” she said.

Guerra said that in many cases, there isn’t a line of qualified individuals to take their place, and some who run don’t always have good intentions.

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Combined with stress due to increased threats to election workers, the result is a strained system, Byrum said.

In terms of solutions, Byrum said one potential fix is increased funding for local clerks, especially with the nine days of early voting allocated through Proposal 2.

She said county clerks are working to put together an estimate of how much they believe early voting will cost them, but estimates will be affected by whether local jurisdictions contract with each other or with counties, as well as what polling locations are used.

“Legislation cannot be cookie cutter,” Byrum said. “There must be flexibility.”

She added that another priority for election officials is further expanding polling locations, as early voting will likely de-incentivize many schools from opening up.

With the possibility to expand to community centers and other types of polling places, Guerra said security is also something that needs more funding, including lockers and safe storage for tabulators on site.

The pair said that other priorities outside security and funding include changing the candidate filing deadline to 90 days prior to an election and providing online training options for election workers.