When Your Candidate Isn't Running Anymore

If you've got your ballot, there's still time to fix it.

By Kristine Christlieb, MFEI News & Commentary Editor, with AI research assistance

July 28, 2026

Michigan Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt suspended his campaign for governor on June 22 — three days before the state's absentee ballots for the August 4 primary even went out. It didn't matter. His name still got printed on the ballot because the deadline for ballot changes had already passed. So every absentee ballot mailed to a Michigan voter arrived with a candidate's name on it who had already quit before the first ballot left the printer.

But there’s more.

Two weeks later on July 5, Mallory McMorrow suspended her campaign for U.S. Senate. In this case, an unknown number of Michigan voters had already cast a ballot and voted for her. And by the time Mike Cox dropped out of the governor's race twelve days after that, more voters had done the same for him.

Under Michigan law, a voter who already returned a ballot for one of those dropout candidates had exactly until 5 p.m. on July 24 to fix it — request that their ballot be "spoiled" and vote again. After that, nothing. MCL 168.765b says it plainly, in its ninth subsection: an elector (voter) cannot spoil a ballot that has already been tabulated. The vote stands, whether the candidate is still running or not.

In real time, Michiganders got to see play out one of the problems the convenience of early voting creates, and it’s one of the reasons voters are often urged to vote in person on election day.

A problem early voting built

By it’s very nature, voting early means voters are marking a ballot with incomplete information. A ballot cast three, four, six weeks before Election Day is a bet that nothing material will change in the race before the polls close. Usually, there's no problem. But sometimes there is: a candidate withdraws, dies, gets indicted, but votes have already been cast.

Michigan's own election calendar shows how wide that window can get. Thanks to Michiganders passing 2018's that allowed no excuse, absentee mail-in voting, ballots went out to voters beginning June 25 — 40 days before Election Day. A lot can happen in forty days. Just ask Noah!

Michigan's own window is modest by national standards. But the underlying problem — casting a vote weeks before you have to, based on a snapshot of the race that may not hold — is now the default way most American voters are encouraged to vote.

 

The fix that can't fix everything

Michigan does have a mechanism for this — the "spoil" process under MCL 168.765b. It breaks down into two situations, each with its own deadline.

Your situation	Deadline	What you can do
Already returned your ballot	July 24, 5 p.m.	You are past the deadline; your vote has been tabulated. Nothing can be done at this point.
You have your mail-in ballot but haven’t voted yet	July 31 and Aug. 3	If you want to receive a new ballot by mail, you need to make that request by July 31; You can make a request for a new ballot in person up to August 3.

In Michigan, clerks can begin processing mail-in ballots as early as eight days before Election Day. Once it happens, subsection (9) of the statute closes the door for good — if you've voted, there's no appeal, no exception, no second deadline.

But if you haven’t submitted your mail-in ballot, there is still time to get a new ballot.

The less obvious version of the problem

The McMorrow and Cox withdrawals made statewide news, which means an engaged voter had a real chance of hearing about it before the July 24 cutoff.

The less obvious situation is the mail voter who doesn't follow campaign news closely, who votes once and doesn't think about the race again until Election Day arrives and who may never learns his/her candidate dropped out at all, let alone in time to do anything about it.

The old-fashioned way, still the safest way

For voters who show up in person on Election Day, these ballot problems don't apply. There's no five-week window for the world to change underneath them, no tabulation deadline to beat, no spoil request to file, no mail ballot sitting in a drop box while a campaign falls apart. They walk in, look at a ballot that reflects the race as it actually stands that day, and vote.