Michigan’s Primary Election is playing out differently this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
There weren’t many lines of voters at the polls today - most likely because many people chose to cast absentee ballots this year due to the pandemic.
But some safety precautions were in place for the few people who did choose to vote in-person.
At St. Joseph City Hall, voting stations were spaced 6-feet apart and plastic screens were placed in front of each poll worker.
Tracy Tiffany is one of the polling officials at St. Joseph City Hall. She said overall voter turnout is up if mail-in ballots are included, but in-person voter turnout is way down compared to previous elections.
“I think we’ve got probably about 85 voters today from 7 O’Clock on and on a normal primary by now I think we would have maybe around 300.”
Those numbers were as of noon on Tuesday.
Tiffany said most all voters are wearing masks but voters cannot be turned away if they refuse to wear one.
Local election officials are also reporting record high numbers of mail-in ballots due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Monica McMichael, Cass County Clerk, said 8,426 absentee ballots were mailed out and as of this morning, 6,071 were returned.
“All local clerks in Cass County have already mailed out more absentee ballots than we saw votes cast four years ago in the August 2016 election.”
McMichael said Cass County was prepared for a high number of mail-in ballots so they were able to line up extra help to process ballots.
She said she isn’t expecting any major delays in results tonight.
Absentee ballots must be dropped off by 8 p.m. tonight in order to be counted.
Contact Annacaroline at acaruso@wvpe.org or follow her on Twitter at @AnnacarolineC16
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