East Lansing Council Race Kicks Into High Gear With Absentee Ballots Out this Week

The decision-making power of East Lansing’s City Council is due for a shakeup as voters will receive absentee ballots in the mail this week to determine who will take over two seats on the city’s five-member governance board.

Voters who have requested an absentee ballot through the Michigan Department of State or who have signed up to be on Michigan’s permanent mail ballot list can start looking out for their mailed ballot Thursday, 40 days ahead of Election Day on Nov. 4. Voters can then mail in their completed ballots, hand deliver their ballot to their local clerk’s office or drop their ballot off at an official drop off box.

Michigan voters approved an amendment to the state constitution in 2018 allowing for voters to not need a reason to vote absentee in elections, which has been widely utilized throughout the state in subsequent elections and contributed to increased voter turnout.

Most of the 5,468 voters who participated in the last East Lansing City Council election in 2023 voted absentee, according to East Lansing City Clerk Emily Gordon. 

The City Council election in 2023 saw a 24% voter turnout from registered voters in the area, Gordon said, as opposed to the nearly 19,000 voters, a nearly 68% voter turnout seen in the 2024 general election, where President Donald Trump was elected.

Though local elections typically draw much smaller voter turnout than statewide elections, Gordon said her office is prepared for possible large voter turnout.

Still, City Council elections in East Lansing can come down to small margins, with races won by a few hundred votes or even two votes, which was the case in the 2019 election.

How candidates are campaigning

Engaging the community, including students on Michigan State University campus who don’t always participate in local elections has been key in campaign efforts, City Council candidate Liam Richichi told ELi.

As president of the MSU Democratic Club during the 2024 presidential election, which saw the largest voter turnout in Michigan state history with 5.7 million voters, Richichi said he and other club members registered more than 2,000 students to vote. Most of those students who registered to vote, registered using their East Lansing addresses, Richichi added and he hopes to reengage those students and more in this election cycle.

“This is our city, we have families, seniors, students, this is our community,” Richichi said. “Let’s engage in it, everyone should have a voice at the table.”

With the change to expand absentee voting in 2018, came an alteration to the campaign schedule, each candidate for City Council told ELi. As the bulk of ballots in the city come from absentee ballots that start to be mailed out more than a month before Election Day, candidates are making a large push for voter engagement now, before ballots hit mailboxes. Traditionally this push came shortly before Election Day.

“It’s great that we’re moving in this direction of having more access to voting… but it definitely does change the dynamics of how we work on elections,” Richichi said. “It definitely makes the last couple months a lot harder. You’ve got to hustle a little bit harder and keep things going. The boilerroom mentality is definitely more stretched out, as opposed to just that last couple days. It’s been one heck of a ride for sure.”

Richichi said residents can expect to see a mailer offering information about his candidacy in the mail soon, his first of the race. Fellow candidate and retired East Lansing Police officer Steve Whelan will also be sending a mailer out near the end of this month, as will Joshua Ramirez-Roberts. Longtime East Lansing school board member Kath Edsall said she’s already sent mailers and will continue pushing engagement through November.

Though she’s served more than a decade on the East Lansing school board and currently serves on the city’s Independent Police Oversight Commission, Edsall said her greatest boost may not come from her institutional knowledge of the area, but her ability to connect on a personal level with residents.

“I’m, I believe, the oldest person running. So I’m not so great with all of the younger people’s social media stuff, but you know, if they reach out in any of those other old-fashioned manners, I’m here and available to talk about the issues and my candidacy and listen to their concerns,” Edsall said.

The City Council election typically only draws a few thousand voters, candidate Adam DeLay told ELi, but after Michigan’s record-breaking 5.7 million voter turnout last November and recent voter rights expansions, he expects voter turnout to increase come November.

In recent elections, Michigan voters have approved multiple expansions to state election law, including instituting a permanent absentee ballot list in the November 2022 election where voters can request to be automatically mailed an absentee ballot each election.

That group of voters who perhaps only engage in larger elections will now receive a ballot through the mail without additional steps this cycle which may increase voter turnout in odd-year elections, DeLay said, and he’s put out two mailers to engage those voters.

Candidates are definitely running a “condensed campaign”, Ramirez-Roberts told ELi.

“It really creates a rush to finish all of your door knocking by the time that absentee ballots [are sent out], especially with how popular absentee voting has become in East Lansing,” he said.

City Council seats will be won through sweat, candidate Chuck Grigsby told ELi. Despite the summer heat, Grigsby said he’s knocked on more than 1,000 doors himself. He believes the candidate who talks to the most people in-person will win the race.

“This is really about rolling up the sleeves and being really aggressive, and making sure that I talk to as many people as possible… I gotta keep driving. There’s no relaxed mode… So I’ll continue to knock on doors,” Grigsby said.

City Council is notably a non-partisan election so rather than vote along party lines people have to get to know candidates individually to know what they’re about, Whelan said, which is why the personal conversations while door knocking are so valuable.

Whelan said he’s distributed 225 signs so far, and they now stand in both conservative and liberal lawns.

“We’re not deciding on a national election. We’re deciding on how we take care of each other and our city,” he said.

To ensure all eligible residents can make their voices heard in the election, Gordon is encouraging voters to look up what their voter registration status is and what precinct they are eligible to vote at prior to Election Day, at mi.gov/vote.

This story was corrected to fix a grammatical error.