GRAND RAPIDS, Mich — It's been nearly nearly a month since the November election where Michigan voters said yes to proposal two which would expanding voting rights and add nine days of early in-person voting.
The Kent County Clerk, Lisa Posthumus Lyons, says this means there is a wholesale change of how elections are administered and how people will be voting.
"So there are still a lot of questions and not a lot of answers at this point," Posthumus Lyons said, who is now looking forward to working with both their local election partners and local clerks along with the state to figure out how to implement this.
READ MORE: Everything you need to know about Proposal 2
In Kent County, there are 250 precincts so you essentially have 250 different elections, Posthumus Lyons said.
"I have a lot of concern, I had a lot of concerns with proposal two from a philosophical and policy perspective and I continue to have concerns with with the proposal from an administrative perspective, but the people spoke."
Posthumus Lyons said the passage of the proposal is going to take a tremendous amount of workforce, and a tremendous amount of funding.
"So this is going to open that conversation up and making sure that our 21st century elections are adequately funded, both from the federal level state level county level on down to the local level," Posthumus Lyons said.
Posthumus Lyons said adding nine days of early voting, in addition to the workforce and the funding questions the clerk will have to sort out.
"Our elections aren't programmed and set up to accommodate the early voting, and especially if it's outside of your individual precinct for each voter. So if we, you know, centralize that either to the county or to the or to the local jurisdiction, that that takes an already extensive administrative programming process on the front end. And just adds to that," she said.
Posthumus Lyons said clerks have 14 days after the election to canvas and certify the election results. But with the passage of Proposal 2, all absentee ballots that are sent and postmarked by Election Day will have to be counted.
"That's a really big change and something that we're going to have to figure out how to how to be able to conduct our canvas, because we can't wait six days to start because we're already taking that full 14 days."
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