Michigan Democrats Give GOP a Rough Election Night

DETROIT, Mich.—Republican expectations for wholesale change at the highest level of Michigan’s state government did not materialize on Nov. 8, as three top Democrat incumbents won reelection.

Democrat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer turned back a strong challenge from GOP challenger Tudor Dixon.

Whitmer defeated Dixon by a margin of eight percent (53 to 45 percent).

Dana Nessel, the state attorney general, won reelection to a second term defeating Republican Matt Deperno, garnering 52 percent of the vote to Deperno’s 46 percent.

Completing the sweep of the top three state offices, incumbent Democrat Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson handily defeated Republican Kristina Karamo 55 to 43 percent.

An election inspector raises a red flag over an absentee ballot at the Huntington Place Central Counting Center in Detroit, Mich. on Nov. 8, 2022. (Steven Kovac/The Epoch Times)

The three Democrats each enjoyed a huge advantage in campaign fundraising and may have benefitted from the presence on the ballot of a hotly contested pro-abortion initiative that each of the three candidates vigorously supported.

The proposition, known as Proposal 3, passed 55 to 45 percent—a margin of victory that mirrors the percentage spread won by the three Democrats.

Proposal 3 is credited with drawing many college students out to vote—a demographic that tends to favor the Democrats.

It is estimated that the combined advertising expenditures of the proponents and opponents of the proposition exceeded $60 million.

Democrats also flipped a congressional seat in what was once the Republican stronghold of Kent County (Grand Rapids) in western Michigan.

The Eighth District seat was formerly held by a first-term Republican, Peter Meijer, who was defeated in the primary.

The GOP nominee, John Gibbs, lost the seat to Democrat Hillary Scholten.

In the newly drawn Tenth Congressional District, encompassing nearly all of Macomb and a small portion of Oakland County, Republican John James is expected to be declared the winner of the race for the open seat.

As of 8:30 a.m. on Nov. 9, with 99 percent of the precincts reporting, James appears to be maintaining a tiny lead over Democrat Carl Marlinga.

Following the redistricting after the 2020 Census, many seats in the Republican-dominated state house and senate became competitive.

As of press time, control of the state senate is still undecided.

The Republicans have held the majority in the state senate since 1984. The latest results indicate the GOP will retain its majority in the state house.

Though the final figures are not yet in, election officials are reporting that statewide voter turnout was higher than in most midterm elections; and that few problems were reported compared to the 2020 presidential election.

The epicenter of controversy in that election was Detroit’s central counting center, where Republican poll challengers claimed they were shut out from overseeing the count.

This year, though the address of the downtown counting center remained the same, city election officials moved the counting room to a portion of the complex which is devoid of walls, doors, and physical barriers, making the process more visible to observers from the public and the media.

Also, many of the counting center’s hundreds of poll workers, called election inspectors, were recruited, not just from the city of Detroit, but from all over the state.

One first-time inspector from the outstate county of Lapeer told The Epoch Times that he saw working at the Detroit vote-counting center as an opportunity to get off the sidelines and “become part of the process.”

“The Detroit Elections Department trains the workers and pays us between $300 and $500 for our labor,” he said.

One inspector of long and varied experience working elections in Detroit said, “Based on all the checks and cross-checks and safeguards built into the system, I think it would be impossible for anything illegal to go on in here.

“I really don’t understand what the challengers are looking for.”

Both parties provided more poll challengers this year than in 2020 and they appeared to have unfettered access to the tables at which the election results from Detroit’s 503 precincts were being processed.

One group of challengers from outstate told The Epoch Times that they were experiencing a “pretty quiet night.”

Early on election day, there were reports of some Detroit voters who turned up at their polling place to vote in person and were told they had already voted by absentee ballot.

In an election night meeting with reporters, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson acknowledged the problem, calling it a “glitch.”

Benson explained that the precinct election workers discovered that somehow there was more than one ballot with the same number.

She said the affected voters were allowed to vote with ballots that the poll workers issued to them after making a small addition to the identification number.