The election is three weeks away, and FOX17 has learned Grand Rapids is deciding to do a pre-approval process for absentee ballots in an effort to avoid delays.
"The legislature gives us a tool in order to work. I want to make sure that we will use it and operate," said Grand Rapids City Clerk Joel Hondorp.
In major cities with populations of about 10,000 or more, city clerks have until Wednesday to tell the Secretary of State their plans for pre-process approval.
"We check the signature remark do check it into the qualified voter file. And then we keep it in a secured room that only clerk staff has access to it. When we go to the pre-processing the day before the election, we can open up we can open the envelope, make sure that the ballot inside because there's the stub number will match the stub number to make sure that the correct ballots in the correct envelope," Hondorp said. "And then we can that we put all those open ballots that are still in the Secrecy Sleeve in a bag. So that way though, that's one less stuff we get have to do."
The Secretary of State tells FOX17 that Detroit is the only other city going ahead with this process. Detroit currently has about 1,600 absentee ballots in.
It's important to note: these cities can't begin to remove the absentee votes from the secrecy sleeve and count them until 7 am on Election Day.
"We just want to make sure that like we always do we want to make sure that every ballot is counted fairly accurately and securely," said Hondorp.
1.6 million Michiganders have asked to vote absentee, according to the Secretary of State's office. As of Tuesday, less than half a million people have sent them to their local clerks.
"In my mind, I still have November 2020, in my mind thinking, this is the this is the volume we're gonna have," said Hondorp.
Two years have passed, but the 2020 election is still fresh in the memory of the Grand Rapids City Clerk.
"I've been working under the mindset that we're going to be at at that level," he added.
In 2020's presidential election, Grand Rapids election workers counted 60,000 absentee ballots. For this upcoming election, they have around 27,000 in at the city clerk's office.
However, cities around West Michigan are seeing lower numbers than Grand Rapids. Kalamazoo has about 3,000, Holland City 1,300, and Muskegon City 139.
Security is another major factor in the election. The 2020 election saw a considerable amount of accusations of fraudulent votes.
This week, the City of Grand Rapids is getting more than $110,000 from the state to update key components. About $40,000 went to computer equipment.
"So we want to make sure that we have up-to-date computer equipment that keeps that voter information safe," Hondorp said.
