Detroit election workers had to drive election results across the county on Tuesday night after the state primary, delaying the reporting of unofficial results on election night.

The delays were due to a faulty firewall, said Dorian Tyus, a spokesman for the Wayne County Clerk’s Office. The issue kept local clerks from electronically submitting their results, which meant they had to physically transport the vote tallies into downtown Detroit.

Results started posting online well after midnight. But the episode worried some who fear delays could encourage conspiracy theories and frustrating those who expected more prompt election results — particularly after last year’s major overhaul in election rules. Once again, Michigan is expected to be a pivotal swing state in November.

Daniel Baxter, a top aide in the Detroit City Clerk’s office, said the bulk of results would have been ready around 11 p.m. if not for the technical issue. Instead, they started posting online after midnight. The large batch of approximately 10,000 mail ballots that were dropped off on Election Day took until 6 a.m. the next morning to count, he added.

Mail ballots arriving the day of elections are a common source of delay in results, since it takes time to verify signatures and conduct other ballot processing. Those steps take place while people wait in line and check in when they vote in person.

“What we focus on now — more so than any other time — is accuracy,” Baxter said. “Certainly we want to be as timely as possible, but we also want to produce a quality product, so we take our time to make sure that every ballot is accounted for.”

Detroit was a major target of election conspiracy theories in 2020, after riots nearly broke out amid days of contentious absentee ballot counting at the TCF Center.

After a citizen-led ballot measure forced a major overhaul in the election code, the state made it possible for election workers to begin processing absentee ballots well before election day, in hopes of speeding up the counting on election nights. And while the results may have taken more time than some hoped, state, county, and city officials stressed that the system worked as intended, with results being delivered physically when electronic methods failed.  

“We will continue to work with local officials to identify additional ways to speed up the process, but we will never do so at the expense of making sure the count is accurate,” said Angela Benander, director of communications in Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s office.

She and others acknowledged the conspiracy theories may fester amid delays.

“That’s why we encourage Michigan citizens and news outlets to make sure they rely on official sources of information for all questions about standard election procedures and know that our state’s robust security processes ensure accurate results,” she added.

Michael Siegrist, the Democratic clerk for Canton Township, said misinformation and disinformation tend to “fill the vacuum” during a delay, something election workers can try and mitigate.

“On the other hand, at this point, I think those who are the purveyors of election disinformation and misinformation, I don’t know that there’s much you can do to satisfy them,” he said. “They’ve got one note, they play that over and over and over again.”