LANSING, Mich. (WZMQ) – Early in-person voting kicked off this weekend and over 250,000 Michiganders participated. County clerks around the state have reported early in-person voting numbers that exceed expectations.
The Marquette County Clerk said over 100,000 voters cast their ballots statewide before 1 pm on Saturday. Marquette County alone logged over 1,500 voters over the weekend.
The November presidential election is expected to be record-breaking, two weeks before election day more than 1 million registered Michigan voters had already cast their ballot, that’s almost 16% of the state’s registered voters.
Barb Byrum, the Ingham County Clerk said if you still have your absentee ballot, return it in person. Especially in rural areas, to make sure your ballot gets returned in time, bring it to your local clerk’s dropbox, or visit your precinct in person to feed your ballot into the tabulator yourself.
Byrum said that after getting to try out the new system during the primaries, centers around the state are ready for a record-breaking number of voters this week.
“Whether that was hiring and training election workers, precinct workers, programming, the election, ordering ballots for the locals, and then the locals doing the work to mail out those absentee ballots, we have been working on this election for months,” Byrum said. “Certainly the large jurisdictions are doing their own, but the rural ones have partnered together and I’m in constant contact with those local clerks to make sure they have the election supplies that they need and are serving the voters.”
Byrum is also reminding voters who want to participate early in person to double-check at which early voting center they are eligible to vote.
Polling locations will close on Monday the 4th to prepare for election day voters, but early voting centers will stay open through 5 pm this Sunday.
