(WWJ) – When the dust settled after Michigan's local elections in early November, the State House lost two representatives who were elected to mayoral positions in Metro Detroit.
Last week Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced a special election to fill those vacant seats will begin with primaries in January, with the general election in April.
On a new Daily J podcast, WWJ's Brian Fisher takes a look at why there's a rush to fill the seats and what consequences could come from the special election.
While Whitmer's administration will be hoping to regain a Democratic majority in the House, Jonathan Oosting of Bridge Michigan says tacking on two more elections to an already busy political calendar could have negative effects — both for voters and clerks.
"Next year is already a very busy election year. There is a presidential primary on Feb. 27, there's a congressional and legislative primary in August and then there's the presidential and other race general election in November," Oosting said on the Daily J.
"And the issue is that elections take time to run, especially in Michigan now, you have to send out absentee ballots 45 days before an election — that's written into the Michigan Constitution at this point — and clerks are really frustrated by this timeline the governor set out because they've already got three elections to run," he said.
With the added election workload in the 13th and 25th Districts in 2024, Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini says there's a lot of practicality and responsibility in setting up an election. He says he would have preferred to see the special election happen in February at the same time as the presidential primaries.
"That would've added one more, not two more elections this year. But to put this on overlapping doesn't make sense," he said.
While the list of candidates was revealed Monday, one question that remains is whether the accelerated election process will help or hurt prospective candidates.
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