GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Last year voters approved a ballot proposal allowing people to vote absentee for any reason. And this year, West Michigan saw a fairly significant increase in mail-in ballots.
The city of Grand Rapids mailed out more than 12,000 absentee ballots this year and saw about an 84% return. The Kent County Clerk's Office says they expect the trend of absentee voting to increase in upcoming elections.
"Because absentee ballots are a growing trend and more and more people are choosing to vote absentee, it is a critical component of elections and its a critical component of campaigns," says county clerk Lisa Posthumus Lyons.
"I think people have always worked to reach out to absentee voters, but you're going to see a much more robust effort on the part of advocacy groups, candidates and proposals will make a concentrated, large scale effort to reach the absentee voters."
Despite the increase in absentee votes, turnout at the polls also increased this year. In 2015 and 2017, about 15.5% of voters turned out in Grand Rapids. In 2019, 20.5% of voters turned out.
"We're really pleased with the election turned out last night," says Lyons. "We had all our results before midnight, we're excited about that. This seemed to go very smoothly at our polling locations and we didn't have to field a lot of complaints which is a really good thing."
Prior to the passing of Proposal 3 last year, Michigan was one of only 10 states that did not have no-reason absentee voting. Now, Michigan has joined a long list of states in the country that allow voters to conveniently cast their votes without showing up to the polling location.
Lyons says it should be easy to vote, but it should be hard to cheat. She says as an election official she is working very carefully and very intentionally to make sure that the security and the safety of our elections are not compromised for the sake of convenience.
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