Local Elections
The next election in East Lansing is the City Council election, which is scheduled for November 4, 2025. Two seats are currently up, with each with a term of four years. If someone wishes to run, they have until July 22, 2025 to file to run for office with the East Lansing City Clerk. Candidates who are choosing to run must also submit a petition with no more than one hundred signatures and no less than fifty signatures, all being registered electors of the city.
East Lansing City Council Election
November 4, 2025
Make Your Vote Count
Voting is one of the best ways to make your voice heard and actually influence the democratic process. In November of 2024 Michigan State was recognized as an ALL IN Most Engaged Campus for College Student Voting. The main organization contributing to this work is MSU Vote, a nonpartisan committee that is committed to increasing the number of registered voters. Young people generally turnout to vote at a lower rate than older generations. This happens for a variety of reasons such as the fact that young people may just not know the proper steps or have more obstacles in the way of getting to the polls. However, voting is especially important for young people because it gives them the opportunity to control their own future.
While it is easy to feel like your one vote doesn't matter, elections - especially local ones- can be decided by just a few votes. For example, in 2000 in Michigan’s 8th district, Republican Mike Rogers defeated Democrat Dianne Bryum by just 111 votes out of the 297,609 total votes cast! Regarding local elections, in 2019 incumbent Erik Altman lost to fellow council member Mark Meadows by just two votes. Michigan State students made up a negligible portion of the votes (just about 170) and could have easily swayed the race one way or another. Click here for more information on voting requirements for East Lansing.
Register to Vote
In Michigan, pre-registration can start as early as sixteen years old. Pre-registering helps to ensure that you are automatically ready to vote the moment you turn eighteen. This helps to promote more civic awareness for young people, allowing them to learn the process, issues, and candidates before their first election. It has also been shown that pre-registration has helped to increase voter turnout among first-time voters because of how active they have become in the process before they are finally able to vote.
If you are a student who goes to school at Michigan State University you have the option to register at your home address OR your campus address. Many people also get worried that if they were to register to vote in East Lansing, their financial aid status and residency could be affected, which is not true. Where someone chooses to register to vote is legally separate from where someone can claim residency for tuition or financial aid. If someone decides to go ahead and register to vote using their campus address, your registered address that is shown on your driver’s license or state ID will be changed. Michigan’s Secretary of State will provide you with a sticker with your new registered address, which you will place on the back of your driver’s license or state ID.
Whether you are a college student wanting to change your address to register to vote, or you just simply need to register, you do need to pay attention to the time until the election. If it is more than fifteen days before an election, you can register to vote online, by mail, or in person and can use the Michigan Voter Information Center. Within fourteen days of the election you will need to visit the East Lansing City Clerk’s Office to register in person. Online and mail registration are unavailable once fourteen days from the election have hit.
If you register to vote in person you will need to bring two items:
-
proof of residency
-
photo ID
For proof of residency, the following items can be accepted: lease agreement, utility bill, MSU enrollment documents, or East Lansing address. The following items can be accepted for photo ID: MSU student ID, Michigan driver’s license, or an out-of-state ID. You can still register on Election Day, though it will most likely be very chaotic. You have up until 8:00 PM on Election Day for same-day registration and voting.
Ranked Choice Voting
For people who do not live in East Lansing normally or are new to the voting world, you may not be aware of the newly adopted ranked-choice voting (RCV). City residents passed a ballot measure in 2023 establishing RCV for the City, and it will be used for the first time in the 2025 council election. RCV is a straightforward term that allows a voter to rank their candidates in an order of preference. Voters will list their candidates in order of preference. The voter will be their first, second, third, and however many choices down the ballot from top preference to bottom preference. All first-round preferences are counted and if that candidate receives more than 50% of votes, they win outright. If during this process no candidate gets a majority, it then moves to the candidate with the fewest votes to be eliminated. The voters that chose the eliminated candidate as their first preference, will then have their vote transferred to the next preferred candidate. This process is repeated over and over until one candidate receives most of the votes. This new system is intended to reduce the impact of “spoilers” and lessen the fear of people that they are “wasting” their votes.
RCV presents a list of advantages and disadvantages. To begin with the advantages, this system aims to promote positive campaigning. The process encourages candidates to appeal to a broader audience to secure second or third-choice votes. Additionally, RCV is designed to support a wider range of diverse candidates. The primary reason for adopting RCV is to allow a candidate to achieve majority support which would mean being over 50%. If a candidate gets over 50%, they will win and in turn, eliminate the spoiler effect. The most common consensus is that the voting process is already challenging; introducing could not only confuse voters when they reach the ballot but overall complicate matters even further. Furthermore, when a tight race takes place, the counting process will have to extend to multiple rounds. Lastly, switching to RCV requires substantial changes, including adjustments to voting infrastructure, training for election officials, and public education on the new system’s implementation.