Absentee ballot requests are now available in Michigan for this November’s general election.

Michigan voters can ask for an absentee ballot by turning in an application online, by mail, or at their local clerk’s office.

The ballots themselves are scheduled to become available Sept. 26 after the list of candidates becomes finalized.

Voting by mail has become a more popular option in the state’s elections since 2018, when Michigan voters approved a constitutional amendment that allowed for absentee voting without an excuse.

For example, numbers from the Michigan Department of State show over 150,000 more people voted absentee in this year’s presidential primary election than in 2020.

State officials recommend requesting an absentee ballot at least 15 days before an election. The 2024 general election is Nov. 5.

A lawsuit over the Line 5 petroleum pipeline that runs through the Straits of Mackinac will be heard in Michigan courts.

A three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit Friday shot down an effort from the pipeline’s owner to keep the case before federal judges.

Sean McBrearty, director for the Michigan branch of the environmental group Clean Water Action, said he believes this settles a years-long back-and-forth about whether the case belongs in state or federal court.

“These are critical issues that need to be heard in our Michigan courts, not in a federal court, which, frankly, just doesn’t have the right kind of jurisdiction or understanding around these particular state law issues,” he said.

Earlier this summer, the federal appellate court judges remanded the case back to Michigan’s 30th Circuit Court in Ingham County. But Enbridge, the Canada-based company that owns Line 5, had requested a rehearing before the entire U.S. Court of Appeals.

Friday’s denial closes the door on that happening.

“We are disappointed that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has denied our petition for rehearing. Enbridge believes that the case should remain in federal court given the clear and substantial questions of federal law raised by the Attorney General’s complaint,” Enbridge spokesperson Ryan Duffy said in a written statement.

The case first arose in 2019, when Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel moved to shut down Line 5. In 2020, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer launched her own action to shut down the pipeline.

Enbridge succeeded in moving the Nessel case to federal court, where Whitmer voluntarily withdrew her complaint, leaving the case with the state attorney general’s office.

But Enbridge is countersuing, asking the federal court in that case for a blanket ruling in its favor, arguing for a summary judgment to dismiss the case.

The company said it believes it would be wrong for a state court to rule before that motion gets decided.

“If the federal district court rules in Enbridge’s favor on the summary judgement motion, that ruling should fully resolve the Attorney General’s action,” part of Duffy’s statement read.

Nessel’s office, however, said it’s an important matter for the state to decide.

“It is a critical responsibility of the state to protect our Great Lakes from the threat of pollution. Our state claims, brought under our state law, will continue to be heard in a state court, and I am grateful we are one step closer to resolving this case on behalf of the state of Michigan,” Nessel said in a press release.

Enbridge said the dispute belongs in federal court because the line is under the jurisdiction of both federal regulators and international agreements.

“The Attorney General seeks to shutdown Line 5 based on perceived safety concerns, but Line 5’s safety is exclusively regulated by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA). Every year PHMSA reviews the safety compliance of Line 5 across the Straits of Mackinac,” Duffy’s statement said.

Line 5’s unimpeded operation is also protected by the bi-lateral 1977 Transit Treaty entered between the United States and Canada. In Enbridge’s view, these federal issues should have weighed in favor of the case remaining in federal court. Even though the Attorney General’s case has been remanded to Michigan state court, Enbridge remains confident that the dispute should be fully resolved by the pending summary judgment motion in Enbridge’s separate lawsuit in Enbridge v. Whitmer,” the statement continued.

A challenge filed with a statewide elections board in Michigan is seeking to keep presidential candidate Cornel West off the general election ballot.

The challenge argues thousands of signatures on West’s nominating paperwork were fraudulent.

The group Clear Choice Action is backing the effort to block West from the ballot with help from lawyers with ties to the Democratic Party.

Clear Choice founder Pete Kavanaugh said there’s ample evidence of “widespread and blatant fraud.”

“When you look through these petition pages, and there are thousands of them, again, it’s close to 30,000 individual signatures, what you see are clear patterns of fraud,” Kavanaugh said.

West is running this cycle as an independent candidate.

His campaign responded to a request for comment with a statement saying it “sees these accusations as part of a broader attempt to undermine the democratic process rather than legitimate legal objections.”

“The allegations focus on procedural issues such as incomplete voter information and errors by petition circulators, disproportionately emphasizing technicalities over substantial compliance,” the statement continued.

An elections board in North Carolina recently blocked West from the ballot in that state after citing concerns about how signatures were gathered there as well.

In Michigan, West could still make the ballot despite the challenge. That’s because his campaign turned in more than twice the required number of signatures to get on the ballot.

According to the state’s rules, that means out of a randomly pulled review sample of about 750 signatures, fewer than half must actually be valid.

The challenge claims a new sample should be used if the first one doesn’t result in West’s disqualification.

West’s campaign argues the attempt is an effort “limit electoral participation.” His run is taking place at a time when even a small number of votes siphoned away from a major party candidate could sway the election.

In the 2016 presidential election, three different independent candidates gained more votes in Michigan than the difference between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Kavanaugh, however, rejected the notion that the challenge is about simply knocking off a candidate through a technicality.

“This is not about pages not being numbered right or dates being wrong in some place. This is quite irregular, right?” Kavanaugh said. “This is literally tens of thousands of people in Michigan being defrauded by having their names and signatures put on one of these petitions to use for ballot access.”

The allegations against West’s paperwork are similar to those that sank campaigns for around half of Michigan’s Republican gubernatorial candidates and many other ballot measures in 2022.

In that election cycle, paid canvassers allegedly faked thousands of signatures for numerous campaigns.

The challenge against West claims gatherers used similar tactics as those alleged in 2022, like taking turns signing fake signatures to switch up handwriting.

In 2022, the Michigan Board of State Canvassers decided not to certify affected campaigns for the ballot.

It will likely decide what to do with West’s candidacy in an upcoming meeting.

Early in-person voting opened across Michigan this past weekend ahead of next week’s primary elections.

According to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, around 6,400 people voted Saturday and around 4,200 people came to the polls on Sunday.

At a press briefing Monday, Benson said over 1.6 million people in the state have requested an absentee ballot. Meanwhile, around 700,000 ballots have been returned.

David Becker with the Center for Election Innovation and Research said spreading voting out across a span of days, rather than allowing it only on Election Day, is better for ballot access and election security.

“Concentrating all voting into a single 12- or 14-hour period on a single Tuesday creates a single point of potential failure for a lot of things to happen. Could be traffic. It could be weather. It could be a power outage. It could be some kind some kind of intentional attack on the system, a cyber event or something else,” Becker said.

Election officials said the only notable issue so far during early voting came Saturday morning when a State of Michigan server became overloaded.

Benson said backup plans allowed voting to continue uninterrupted and that she’s confident it won’t happen again.

The early voting period is part of a series of recent election changes that also allow local clerks to start some pre-processing, but not counting, of absentee ballots ahead of Election Day.

Sterling Heights City Clerk Melanie Ryska said that goes a long way toward getting election results available faster.

“With pre-processing or early tabulation, we hope to work and alleviate some of that work and that strain we have on Election Day. That will give us an opportunity to focus on the ballots that are being returned the day before or on Election Day, to process those on Election Day,” Ryska said.

For comparison, Ryska said it took her team over 27 hours during the 2020 presidential election cycle to finish going through all of the absentee ballots it received.

Election officials are hoping to avoid a repeat this year of tensions from the fallout of the 2020 election, when Michigan became a focal point of efforts to overturn the results of the presidential race.

Michigan saw several policy changes following that experience. This is the first major cycle when they’ll be tested.

Aside from creating an eight day in-person early-voting period and allowing for some pre-processing of ballots, new Michigan election laws further criminalized the intimidation of election workers.

“We’ve also been running scenario planning exercises with law enforcement, first responders, and our clerks all across the state to make sure that we’ve got a rapid response plan in place if anything does erupt or occur on Election Day so that we can be ready,” Benson said.