Lansing City Clerk estimates low turnout for Tuesday election

Todd Heywood
·4 min read

LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) – With a key election on the ballot Tuesday, May 7, Lansing City Clerk Chris Swope is predicting a turnout of about 15% of the city’s registered voters.

That’s based on the November 2023 election as well as the trend of absentee ballots coming back.

Swope tells 6 News he mailed out 17,200 absentee ballots for this election. But just 43% of those have been returned, leaving “9800 ballots still outstanding.” Voters can still return their ballot Tuesday – or during early voting, and feed it into a tabulator themselves.

Voting booths are seen at a polling station at Langley High School in McLean, Va., on Election Day, Tuesday, November 8, 2022. (Greg Nash/The Hill)
Voting booths are seen at a polling station at Langley High School in McLean, Va., on Election Day, Tuesday, November 8, 2022. (Greg Nash/The Hill)

He says his office has begun processing some of the returned ballots, which a new state law allows, and his team has begun to find messages from the voters.

“We had a couple of them, of voters, including notes with their ballots saying they didn’t know any of the candidates and they didn’t understand what it was they were voting on,” Swope tells 6 News. “So, I think the high number of ballots that have not been returned is reflective of that. Voters, you know, just this being such a unique thing to elect a Charter Commission and the fact of having 36 candidates to weed through, to select up to 9 candidates, I think for a lot of voters it’s just a little bit more time than they’re willing to dedicate.”

Lansing voters in November voted to revisit the city’s charter, which Swope compared to the municipality’s constitution. The document prescribes the formation and operation of the government.

Lansing City Council earlier this year approved a budget amendment for $500,000 for the commission’s operations, including possible special elections. The 9 members elected Tuesday will have through November 2026 to present a new city charter to voters. If voters reject the proposed new charter, the commission could come back with an alternative option, or leave the current charter in place.

Swope says the charter was adopted in the mid-70s and voters have not opted to rewrite it until now.

When polls close Tuesday night, Swope anticipates 15% of the city’s registered voters will have cast ballots. In November, when voters approved the commission and new city council members, the turnout was 16.3% of registered voters.

There are two dueling slates of candidates running in the race – accounting for half of the 36 candidates.

A slate backed by labor groups and the Lansing Regional Chamber of Commerce is made up of:

  • Stephen Purchase

  • Ben Dowd

  • Joan Bauer

  • Muhammad Qawwee

  • Elizabeth Driscoll Boyd

  • Brian Jeffries

  • Miranda Swartz

  • Keith Williams

  • Guillermo Lopez

That slate is backed by the Chamber and these labor groups:

  • Capital City Labor Program (Lansing Police Officers Union)

  • IAFF Local 421 (Lansing Firefighters)

  • Plumbers & Pipefitters Local 333

  • IBEW Local 665

  • IBEW Local 352

  • UAW Local 2256

  • Lansing Regional Chamber of Commerce

  • Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters & MillwrightsMichigan

  • Building Trades Council

  • Michigan Laborers Local 499

  • Painters IUPAT DC1M

  • Operating Engineers Local 324

Steve Japinga is vice president of public affairs for the Chamber. When 6 News shared Swope’s assessment of the turnout, his first response was, “Wow.”

“This is a serious process this committee is going to go through,” he says. “That is a concern.”

Samuel Klahn is one of the nine members of the Lansing Community Alliance. This slate formed, in part, as a protest over what Klahn says was a disingenuous endorsement process by the Chamber and labor unions.

That slate is made up of the following candidates:

  • Samuel Klahn

  • Heath Lowry

  • Randy Dykhuis

  • Layna Anderson

  • Jazmin Anderson

  • Erica Lynn

  • Ross Yednock

  • Julie Vandeboom

  • Jerry Norris

Klahn says the returned ballots and expected 15% turnout is “what everybody expected.”

He says his slate has been telling voters, “Even if you don’t vote for me, please go out and vote.”

Elizabeth Driscoll Boyd made a career working for two Secretaries of State in Michigan, as well as for former Gov. Jennifer Granholm. She says voting is important to her. But the turnout was a problem for her.

“Does it offend me? Does it surprise me? That people have not voted?” she asks. “Kind of.”

For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to WLNS 6 News.