18,953 Absentee Ballots Have Been Spoiled For Primaries, Will They Make A Difference?

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 07/24/2026) As of this afternoon, 18,953 absentee ballots have been spoiled for the August primary election. The Secretary of State's office notes that they're not all tied to the several candidates who've suspended their campaigns, as "people spoil for a bunch of reasons."

Absentee voters had until 5 p.m. Friday to appear at their local clerk's office, spoil a returned ballot and cast a new one if, for example, their preferred primary candidate had dropped out. Political consultants expect that candidate withdrawals account for only a fraction of the spoiled ballots, although in an exceptionally close race even that small number could matter.

On June 25, absent-voter ballots were required to be available and 24-hour absentee ballot drop boxes needed to become accessible. The 18,953 spoiled ballots represent about 3% of the more than 614,000 absentee ballots returned as of Wednesday morning. It's estimated that 40% of all likely primary voters had already cast their ballots on Monday.

But in the last 29 days, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-Royal Oak) dropped out of the U.S. Senate primary, former Attorney General Mike Cox exited the Republican primary for governor and, in the 10th U.S. House district Sterling Heights Republican Robert Lulgjuraj walked away from his race.

Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt (R-Lawton) also ended his gubernatorial campaign two days before absentee ballots became available, too late to remove his name from them.

"I think that driving there, driving home and finding somebody in the clerk's office who knows how this all works, and everybody filling out the right forms, I think if you got out in a half an hour it would be freakish," said Mark Grebner of Practical Political Data, a firm in East Lansing. "It's right up there with having your tires rotated. It's a little bit easier than getting your dog groomed."

Grebner guesses that when it comes to absentee voters who decided to spoil their ballots, it would be in the mid-hundreds for Democratic U.S. Senate voters and the mid-hundreds for Republican gubernatorial voters.

For those who proceeded to spoil their ballots, Grebner said that clerk staff likely had to find the instructions. He suspected that "none of them remember exactly how to do it," unless it's a large clerk's office or, as he anticipates, they were working directly with Lansing Clerk Chris Swope who's been in the role for more than two decades.

"Even when candidates have passed away, voters vote, and once they have cast those ballots, their votes pretty much are locked in the circumstances," said Meghan Reckling, the Livingston County Republican and head of Victory Field Operations.

Reckling said her experience on Election Day has been that 80% of the time, when voters finish their ballot and something goes wrong with the tabulator, for example, they're not interested in re-doing it.

"They've already filled out the bubbles, and they're trying to get to their next thing on their to-do list that day," Reckling said. "They either have the ballot override whatever the error was, or they just choose to walk out and not vote. So I think the number of Michiganders that are going to go into their clerk's office, spoil those ballots and re-vote is going to be almost non-existent throughout the state. Definitely not enough to have an impact."

It is not currently clear how many voters who spoiled their ballots were Republican primary voters, Democratic primary voters or if there's any other correction they want to make on their ballot, whether it be how they filled out their bubbles or if they forgot to vote on a local millage proposal.

On Friday's episode of "Off The Record," former Lt. Gov. John D. Cherry Jr., the Clio Democrat who supported McMorrow, said he was still figuring out if he wanted to go to his clerk's office and change his vote this afternoon.

"(With) all this negativity, I'm having a hard time sorting through what each of these candidates really stand for," Cherry said. "I'm amazed at how these camps are just going after each other, and . . . it's not the majority, it's a minority of very clear activists who've got an ax to grind."

He said a lot of the drop-outs are occurring in places where the national party has something at stake, and "they're exerting influence on candidates."

Cherry, who made his own failed run for governor in 2010, suspects that pressure was put on McMorrow because established Democrats in Washington, D.C. felt her presence would help progressive Abdul El-Sayed and hurt their preferred candidate, U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Birmingham).

However, political consultant Robert Joerg said if the Democratic U.S. Senate primary is determined within one to two percentage points, spoiled ballots could have an impact.