LANSING — Early voting for the August primary election started Saturday, July 27, running through Aug. 4.
It’s one of a few options Michigan voters have to make sure their voices are heard on a host of local issues and November candidate selections.
Early voting takes place in-person at a designated location in your county or municipality. It works just like election day voting and will run every day through Aug. 4.
You can find your early voting site with the Michigan Secretary of State — and remember, this may be different from your usual election day voting location.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said Monday that voters had cast around 6,400 ballots on Saturday, along with 4,200 on Sunday. Those figures are down slightly from February’s presidential primary election, the first statewide test of the early voting system.
Some polling places encountered an error Saturday morning as a state computer server was overwhelmed, causing a delay in voting. Benson says that issue has been fixed and that she doesn’t anticipate further issues.
“One of the assets of early voting is that it enables us to catch something like that on a Saturday when you still have, you know, eight and three quarters days of early voting to go and then fix and make sure it doesn’t happen again,” she said. “I’m confident it won’t happen again.”
Over 1.6 million Michigan residents have requested their absentee ballot, with nearly 700,000 already returning their completed ballot, Benson said.
Benson suggested absentee voters to return their ballots in person to their local clerk, ballot dropbox or early voting site, since the mail may not ensure the ballot arrives before election day.
You an find more information on early voting, absentee voting and election day voting with the michigan secretary of state and at 9and10news.Com.
Voters can register to vote through Aug. 6, but will need to do so in-person with their local clerk.
More information on early voting, absentee voting and election day voting can be found with the Secretary of State.