Poll workers count ballots at the end of Election Day at City Hall in Warren, the third largest city in Michigan. (Brittany Greeson for Votebeat)
This article was originally published by Votebeat , a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.
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Michigan set itself up to blaze through its 2024 ballot counts.
New policies were in the state’s favor, including pre-processing of absentee ballots as well as early in-person voting, and voters and election officials took full advantage.
But elections are ultimately a human process, from who participates in them to who runs them. And it was mostly a set of human factors that prevented the state from releasing unofficial results until the middle of the day on Wednesday.
Getting results any faster in future elections is likely to prove difficult, officials say. But that doesn’t mean they’re not going to try.