FLINT, MI — The city of Flint has announced some of the final election results in Genesee County following the Aug. 6 primary election, and city and county officials say the delays are at least partly due to an old problem — processing absentee ballots.

Flint sent its results to the county in three separate data transmissions in the early hours of Wednesday, Aug. 7, but it took until about 7 a.m. Wednesday to complete the counting of the more than 5,000 absentee ballots, the latest count of any municipality in the region, said Domonique Clemons, county clerk and registrar.

Flint City Clerk Davina Donahue told City Council members last week that the processing of absentee ballots was the main issue that led to delayed results.

Council members said improvements needed to be made before the Nov. 5 presidential election.

“We have an important election coming up in November and we need to make sure we do our best,” said 3rd District City Councilman Quincy Murphy. “I don’t know why the city of Flint is behind, but when you go to check the election results, they don’t come in until the early hours of the morning… People are frustrated and feel like the election should be run much better.”

Donahue said she is working on several measures to make election administration more efficient, but added that there is a simple reason vote counting takes longer here than in smaller communities.

“The reason we’re always late is because we have more precincts than anybody else…” the town clerk said. “We’re late because we have more (ballots).”

MLive-The Flint Journal could not immediately reach Donahue for further comment Monday, Aug. 12, but problems with delays related to mail-in ballots have been an issue in the city for more than a decade.

After the 2020 primary election, the county proposed that Flint begin processing absentee ballots immediately after polls opened on election days, prepare for vote counting before the election, and employ more poll workers.

County election officials also suggested at the time that the city reduce the number of voting precincts in the city – which is what happened after the 2020 census.

In 2012, the state of Michigan sent an election worker to the city to help process over 10,000 absentee ballots after work in the general election that year was still incomplete 19 hours after polls closed.

In this year’s primary election, the city issued more than 6,700 mail-in ballots, and Clemons said 5,168 of them were returned for counting.

Although the state allows ballots to be prepared for processing before Election Day, Clemons said Flint decided not to begin the process until Election Day during the primary election.

“I have encouraged the city clerk to do some pre-processing in the future,” Clemons said Monday.

Donahue was appointed city clerk in December 2022, succeeding Inez Brown, who retired earlier that year.

She said at the time of her appointment that numerous changes were needed in the clerk’s office to address issues such as data retention, election administration and standard operating procedures.

8th District City Councilman Dennis Pfeiffer said delays in announcing election results would contribute to voters’ distrust of the system.

“The fact that the results aren’t available until 3 or 4 a.m. only reinforces the conspiracy theories that something wrong happened…” Pfeiffer said. “It’s ridiculous why it’s taking so long.”