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There will be a Democrat candidate for Michigan’s 1st Congressional District on the ballot in November.
Traverse City-native Matt Morgan ran as a write-in candidate in the August primary after he was left off the ballot due to a technicality.
The Michigan Board of State Canvassers has certified that Morgan received more than the necessary votes to be placed on the ballot in the general election.
Morgan will face incumbent Republican Jack Bergman to represent northern Michigan in the Congress on November 6th.
Here is the full press release from the Morgan campaign:
Michigan Board of State Canvassers certifies Matt Morgan for November ballot
The race for Michigan’s 1st Congressional District gained national attention after the August 7 primary, when more than 32,000 Democratic write-in votes were cast. Matt Morgan, an Iraq War veteran and retired Marine, was the only write-in candidate running, and on Friday, August 24, the Michigan Board of Canvassers officially approved him to challenge freshman incumbent Jack Bergman on the November general election ballot.
While not all write-in votes were certified (some voters used the incorrect blank space; some forgot to fill in the ballot bubble, etc.), Morgan received 29,293 official votes in the 32 counties that make up Michigan’s 1st.
In a formula set by the State of Michigan, Morgan needed to receive at least five percent of the total ballots cast in the race with the most votes in the Democratic primary in Michigan’s 1st. This amounted to 3,781 votes.
Marquette County was the first to certify is county vote count, in which 4,388 write-in ballots were counted for Morgan. In Grand Traverse County alone, 7,153 write-in votes were certified; by comparison, the two candidates on the Democratic primary ballot in 2016 collected a total of some 4,500 votes.
“This win belongs to the voters of our district,” Morgan said on Friday. “We had hundreds of volunteers working tirelessly in the days leading up to the primary, knocking doors and making phone calls. As a result, a whole lot of people showed up at the polls and made it clear they want a choice when they cast their ballots in November.”
Morgan, who has been traveling the nearly 25,000-square mile district since April, 2017, was left off the primary ballot due to a technicality with his nominating petitions. Instead of allowing his campaign to falter, Morgan utilized the write-in as an opportunity to connect with people and build name recognition.
“In the end, it was perhaps one of the best things that has happened to this campaign. I took a pledge from the very beginning to refuse all corporate PAC money, and as a grassroots campaign, we know how important it is to get our message to voters. The energy surrounding the write-in really provided an opportunity for people to share our story,” Morgan said.
The Traverse City resident has earned more than 20 labor organization endorsements and is being supported by current and past elected officials like Bart Stupak, who held Michigan’s 1st for 18 years.
“This campaign has turned into a movement to elect a new generation of leadership for our district,” Morgan noted. “We were told this would be a nearly impossible task, but our field team and volunteers met that challenge with the same tenacity we will bring to the general election.”
“We know we have more to teach Washington than Washington has to teach us. We know the hardworking families of Michigan’s 1st deserve a representative who will serve them above partisan politics and corporate interests,” Morgan said. “I’ve spent 17 months traveling all 32 counties in this district, and I know people are ready for change.”
Morgan is an Iraq combat veteran who spent more than 20 years as a career Marine officer and retired as a lieutenant colonel. He completed two combat tours in Iraq and conducted counterterrorism work on the Horn of Africa. Morgan also held senior staff positions at both the Pentagon and Marine Forces Command. He now lives in Traverse City with his wife, bestselling author Angie Morgan, and their two young sons.
