The State Board of Canvassers verified Friday that the Democratic candidate in Michigan’s first congressional district has enough write-in votes to appear on the November ballot.
A clerical error lead Democrat Matt Morgan’s campaign to conduct a last-minute write-in initiative after the State Board of Canvassers disqualified him from appearing on the August primary ballot.
Officials with the Secretary of State said Morgan needed roughly 3,800 votes in order to appear on the November ballot. The campaign brought in more than 29,000.
Morgan said the announcement didn’t come as a surprise.
“We were always really confident that we’d succeed at the write-in campaign and win the primary so we were always planning to run this campaign straight through to win in November.”
Morgan said he thinks the strong voter turnout on the write-in campaign is a good sign for the upcoming election.
“I would never recommend to any other candidate that they do business this way but we certainly used it as an opportunity to engage and I think that we’ve made the best of it and it definitely has given us an opportunity to connect with voters in a way that we wouldn’t have otherwise.”
Michigan’s first congressional district covers the entire UP and 16 counties in northern lower Michigan.
Morgan will face incumbent Republican Jack Bergman in November.