Berrien County Clerk Sharon Tyler says early voting for the first time ever this year went surprisingly well.
Due to a change in state law approved by voters, counties across Michigan were required to offer at least nine days of early voting in state and federal elections this year.
Speaking to the Berrien County Board of Commissioners this week, Tyler said the first round of early voting, from February 17 to February 25, did include low turnout.
“This is what we had in voters,” Tyler said. “In North County, we had 224. In South County, 241. So countywide was 465. As you see, Bainbridge [Township] had 34, Benton Charter Township had 101 for 600. That means we only had 0.5% in early voting.”
Tyler’s office had to train about 300 elections workers throughout the county to prepare for the early voting. She said with the early voting for the presidential primary, there were some security concerns.
“So one of our surrounding ones had an interesting individual walk into their office, which put us on a high alert. They closed basically their office down and had to call outside. So we reacted to that issue during presidential primary.”
Tyler also noted a huge job that came out of early voting was the need to send out mailers to residents telling them about the early voting option. Although those mailers were sent out, the turnout was low, and she expects as people become more aware of the option, the numbers will rise.
Berrien County received a $134,000 grant from the state to make the early voting possible.
Despite her early reservations about early voting, Tyler said, “On the whole, it was very positive.”