GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Grand Rapids election workers are getting a head start.
On Tuesday, election workers began pre-processing absentee ballots for this year’s election.
"We're going to have a good amount of the absentee ballots already tabulated, which takes a lot of pressure off,” said City of Grand Rapids Clerk Joel Hondorp.
Hondorp said that's all thanks to election workers pre-processing absentee ballots.
It's a new opportunity for jurisdictions with a population of more than five thousand to verify and tabulate absentee ballots sent in before election day.
"Looking back to 2020 when we couldn't start until basically election day morning and we didn't get done with all of our ballots until Wednesday afternoon. And that's a lot of fatigue on workers and clerk staff and trying to be — make things accurate. So, this time gives us time, like during a regular workday, everybody can go home, get a good night's sleep, come back tomorrow, fresh, ready to do the next batches,” said Hondorp.
13 ON YOUR SIDE was able to see batches of ballots go through the process of being verified, which includes workers checking for signatures and matching numbers.
"They're going through and making sure that the ballot, which is in a secret sleeve, matches the ballot number on the envelope. And then they'll remove that stub, remove the ballot from the secret sleeve, bring it over to a tabulator where we're actually tabulating them,” said Hondorp.
Because this process began earlier this election season, certified poll watchers were able to start watching this process sooner.
And because this process started earlier, and early voting has begun as well, Hondorp said he hopes this means things will run smoothly on election day.
“We're doing the absentee counting. We've got all election training done. We got everything ready to go,” said Hondorp.
So far, 23,000 absentee ballots have been returned from voters in the city. 30,000 were requested.
Absentee voters are able to return their ballots to drop-off locations until 8:00 p.m. on Election Day.