By Annah Johnson
Election day won’t look the same this year, so think of it more as election week…or two. With a dramatic increase in mail-in voting, election officials are encouraging us to be patient with them while they gather the results.
Your Ballot
Polls are open between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 3.
There is still time to vote. If you have an absentee ballot, make sure you drop it off at your local clerk’s office, or a dropbox before 8 p.m. on Tuesday. Note that it is too late to put your ballot in the mail, as it will not arrive in time to be counted.
If you have already sent it in, check the status of your ballot online.
“It’s always a good idea to follow your ballot through,” said Kent County Elections Director
Gerrid Uzarski. You can check to ensure your ballot was received or rejected. If your ballot was rejected, you can still cast your vote in person, or make whatever correction is needed to validate your mail-in ballot.
Go to the Michigan Voter Information Center for information about your ballot status, where you can vote, and find answers to any other questions you have about your ballot.
Election Results
With the unprecedented number of mail-in ballots this election, the process of gathering results will take longer than previous years and will differ from county to county, state to state.
According to Uzarski, in November of 2016, there were merely 68,967 returned mail-in ballots in Kent county. This year, as of Oct. 30, of the issued 216,753 ballots they have received 175,731 – an 81% return rate. This is a large increase of ballots being cast by mail, and each of them needs to be counted before results are official.
There is the possibility that whoever is leading the polls on election night will claim victory in light of the conspiracies surrounding when results are official. The truth is, we will all just have to be patient.
“The way the process works,” Uzarski explained, “We always call those results unofficial until we are able to go through the entire canvas, which is a very lengthy process. This time it’s gonna take us probably a full two weeks before we are able to certify and call our results official.”
