Matt Friedman explains the best way to prep for voting as election looms

Matt Friedman with Detroit Votes, a nonpartisan voter education initiative to help us better understand what we need to do before Tuesday and on Tuesday. Matt, welcome to the show. Thank you, Ronia. I'm glad to have the chance to take a few minutes and tell voters what they need to know if they haven't voted yet. Although many have. We're up over 24,000 early voters in Detroit, plus about 70,000 absentee voters. So a lot of people are voting around the state, including in the city of Detroit. Yeah, certainly breaking records, too. I know young voters have come out a lot more than ever, which is the Pretty surprising to see, but I think a lot of people are looking for their votes to be heard. Yeah, young voters aren't necessarily entrenched in habits, and they know some of the options that are newer in the state of Michigan. The voters of the state have amended the Constitution in the last several years, and incrementally we've gotten more and more ways to vote, and the processes have opened up a little bit. So early voting is something that's more comfortable to young voters. Absentee voting, for no reason given, is comfortable to young And we're seeing that all over the place. Roni, I think it'd be helpful for your audience to know that if you have an absentee ballot at home, and you're taking some time to research the issues, you have time. You have until eight o'clock on election night to get that ballot back. But the best way to do that for now is through a dropbox, a secure dropbox in your community. In Detroit, there are 38 dropboxes around the city. In every neighborhood, east side, west side, no matter where you are, there's a Dropbox near you. You can go to DetroitVotes.org and find the Dropbox to use. So it's too late to put it in the mail, but the Dropboxes are convenient and located near where you live or where you work to put that absentee ballot in the Dropbox. If you're in Detroit and you want to do in-person early voting, you actually can tomorrow, Monday. One day, there are options in several cities, including Detroit. Two locations on Monday for in-person early voting, the Department of Elections on West Grand Boulevard or the Coleman Young Municipal Center downtown. At either place tomorrow during the day, you can early vote in person. Super helpful information. In fact, we've included a QR code on the screen. That way, if anyone needs information, Detroit Votes, you scan that QR code, just bring up your phone, turn on the camera app, and it will take you to the link with all that information. Certainly helpful, especially with, you know, time's ticking. So right now we're less than two days is away and we got a lot of work ahead of us. Now, in the meantime, There's been a lot of discussion about election security and a lot of concern about election integrity. What safeguards are in place that you know of that every voter should know about? Every step in the process has safeguards and backup to make sure that every vote is counted accurately and securely, not only in Detroit, but in every city and township around the state. 1,500-plus city and township clerks are the guardians of democracy. They have taken an oath, along with their election workers, to protect this election. They're prepared. They're ready to do it. And they've been doing it already because absentee voting has been underway since the ballots went out more than a month ago. So I think every voter needs to understand that their vote will be counted and it is secure. All the way through Election Day, all the way through 8 o'clock when the polls close, and then when it's time for counting and tabulation, the systems are in place to do it right. What would you say some of the biggest misconceptions are, or false claims that you may have heard of during this election cycle? Well, the one I hear in Detroit is about late ballots. And since 2020, we have heard Frankly, losing candidates cast doubt on ballots that come into Huntington Place to be counted late at night or in the middle of the night. And I'm here to tell you right now, Ronia, and all the Fox 2 audience, there will be trucks with ballots coming in late at night to Huntington Place to be counted on election night. And it's a very good reason why that happens. And it follows As I mentioned before, every voter has the opportunity to submit an absentee ballot up until 8 o'clock on election night. And there are 38 drop boxes around the city. The city of Detroit is enormous. It's about 140 square miles. So after 8 o'clock, this big logistics effort gets started where ballots are picked up from those 38 drop boxes. That takes a while. Then they have to make it to the Department of Elections in New Center. That is where signature verification happens for all of those ballots. Once the signatures are verified, those verified ballots go down to Huntington Place where they are tabulated. That's going to take until probably the wee hours of the morning on Wednesday. By law, it has to. So when you hear that there are some ballots in Detroit that haven't been counted, that's why. And most of the suburbs have one drop box. It's located very close to the clerk's office It's an easy effort to collect. I mean, you would certainly say that we can't have an answer as of Tuesday, then, for sure, because it really does take until Wednesday to finish the counting. Yeah, if your idea of an answer, and for a lot of voters it is, is to have final numbers, those numbers are not going to happen until closer to when you awake on Wednesday morning than when you go to bed on to be the same. Tuesday night. Yeah, certainly. A lot of information that is so helpful to a lot of people who are still trying to make a decision by Tuesday. What's the message you have for Michiganders who are watching right now and really trying to figure out what to do? Vote in the way you'd like to vote. In some cities, you'd be able to vote early tomorrow. Monday, Detroit is one of them. If you have that absentee ballot at home, fill it out, get it into a drop box near where you live. Or if you'd like to vote in your local neighborhood precinct on Tuesday, the polls will be open as they always have. The options are there for you, the safety, the security, the reliability is there for you. So please vote if you need some help figuring out where to do it, detroitvotes.org. We'll help you in the city of Detroit. The Secretary of State's website elsewhere in the state of Michigan is a great resource. You just type in where you live, and the website will tell you the closest place to vote near where you live. Yeah, and we have the QR code on the screen. That way, if you missed that information, all you got to do is scan the QR code. We'll also put this on Fox2Detroit.com. Just click on Detroit Live. Yeah, absolutely. Matt, it's so good to have you join us today, especially on a day when a lot of bombshell political news has been happening. So we appreciate you. Yeah, it's tough to cut through the news sometimes. Yeah. And understand that this is all about voting. Absolutely. And the opportunity is there for everybody. Absolutely. We appreciate you, and we'll check in with you hopefully later this week. Please. I should be easy to find for your colleagues. Of course. All right. Matt Friedman from Detroit Votes. We have a lot more coming up in the show.