Total National Voter Registration - December 31st, 2025
🔴Republicans: -29,327
🔵Democrats: -81,654
🟡Others: +43,673
Arizona year-end maintenance pushed the nation into the negative column in December, and the total Democratic edge over Republicans dropped by 0.03%.
With the Michigan primary election less than three weeks away, this is a good time to re-up on why Michigan has the worst primary ballot design and the largest absentee rejection rate in the country.
Any voter who votes in more than one party column has their ballot rejected, affecting tens of thousands of Michiganders every two years.
Fewer contested races this year should help reduce the error rate, but we should still expect up to 50,000 returned absentee ballots to be rejected, with the rejection rate largely concentrated in the Democratic primary.
Hayley Harding at Votebeat illuminates Michigan's primary debacle, which has lasted three consecutive elections, but I believe she undersells the lead.
Having looked into the data, I estimate between 60,000 and 80,000 Michiganders will have their mail ballots rejected in Tuesday's primary election due to the state's baffling ballot design and election administration rules.
The article outlines the why, and I'd like to add some data that outlines the "how much."
In the 2022 primary, Michigan had a turnout of 2,167,798 but only recorded a vote count of 2,037,655 in the Governor's primary race. The difference of 130,143 votes means that 6% of all voters who showed up to vote in that election did not have a ballot counted for the top-of-ticket race.