KENT COUNTY, Mich. — Less than one percent of registered voters in Kent County participated in early, in-person voting during Michigan’s 2024 presidential primary.
According to Lisa Posthumus Lyons, the Kent County clerk, 0.8 percent of people took advantage of the option enacted under Proposal 2, a voter approved ballot initiative passed in November 2022 that aimed to expand voting opportunities.
Tuesday’s presidential primary marked the first major election since the measures proposed in Proposal 2 went into law.
Posthumus Lyons described the process to set up nine days of early voting as “labor intensive” and hopes as time goes on, more voters become aware of the changes.
“I’m going to reserve judgement at this point,” said Posthumus Lyons. “It would be very frustrating to put the effort and expense into a method that’s so labor intensive like early voting if the voters aren’t going to utilize it but again, I think it’s too early to really make that determination for a number of factors not the least of which is that it’s just brand new. There [also] doesn’t seem to be a lot of hype surrounding this election that you would typically have in a primary.”
Overall voter turnout was 13.8 percent in Kent County as of Tuesday afternoon according to Posthumus Lyons. She predicted the number would rise to around 25 percent once election workers tabulated results.
During the 2020 and 2016 presidential primaries, 31.1 and 39 percent of registered voters in Kent County showed up to the polls respectively.
“I think if we see a low turnout election for this presidential primary, which it’s looking like we’re going to see, I don’t think that’s indicative of what we’re going to see in November,” said Posthumus Lyons. “In the August primary, we’re going to have some open seats with competitive primaries from both parties down the ballot so that will motivate voters to come out.”
She added, “As… it gets closer to November, that excitement ramps up, there’s more attention on the races, candidates start coming in more frequently, so you get a sense of excitement and interest in participating.”
