The interesting part of this story (to me at least) was this:
> The student's ballot is expected to count in the upcoming election — although it was illegally cast — because there is no way for election officials to retrieve it once it's been put through a tabulator, according to two sources familiar with Michigan election laws. The setup is meant to prevent ballots from being tracked back to an individual voter.
The real question is how many other processes failed for them to get to the point that they were allowed to cast the vote. Why are those processes so weak?
Because I support the idea of a completely secret ballot. There is no transaction rollback there is no undo once it is cast. It is there and it is in an anonymized pool. This means that there must be much stronger protections to make sure that only those who are allowed to vote can cast the vote.
At least in New York City a few years ago, affidavit ballots weren’t run until the very end. So you had a pre and post-run total, and if the affidavits swung a race it was a payday for the election lawyers who would scrutinise each one.
> The student's ballot is expected to count in the upcoming election — although it was illegally cast — because there is no way for election officials to retrieve it once it's been put through a tabulator, according to two sources familiar with Michigan election laws. The setup is meant to prevent ballots from being tracked back to an individual voter.