News Photo by Steve Schulwitz
Kate Szydlowski, accounts payable clerk for Alpena, shows off the absentee ballot drop box in front of City Hall. Absentee voting begins today in Michigan.
ALPENA — Absentee voting for the Nov. 5 presidential election begins today and voters will be able to visit their local clerk’s office to fill out a ballot.
Some municipalities that have a permanent absentee voting roll will mail ballots early next week to residents who requested them early next week.
Alpena Township Clerk Michele Palevich said her office and staff are ready to service voters who want to take advantage of absentee voting, which has become a popular voting option over the last several election cycles.
She said residents who are registered to vote can stop at the township office building beginning today and obtain an absentee ballot.
“We’re all set and ready to go, and people can just stop in,” she said.
Voters who have not requested an absentee ballot or are not on the permanent absentee ballot roll must provide the clerk’s office with a state-issued driver’s license or personal identification card and know the last four digits of their social security number.
Palevich said most people who vote absentee do so by filling out the ballot at home and mailing them to the office or dropping them into the secure ballot box outside of the township building. She said few people come to vote absentee in person. Palevich said the ballots will be mailed early next week to people who have requested them after an accuracy test is done on the tabulators.
“We’re still waiting for the programming from the county for the accuracy test,” she said. “Once we get that, we’ll conduct an accuracy test and we’ll put the absentee ballots in the mail.”
Palevich said the township currently has about 1,670 voters on its permanent absentee voting roll.
People who want to vote will also have a chance to do so utilizing the state’s new in-person early voting system. For early voting, voters can go to an established poll and vote as they do on election day.
The early voting period takes place for a minimum of nine consecutive days, ending on the Sunday before an election. Communities may decide to provide additional days of early voting, up to 29 days in total.
Early voting sites must be open for at least eight hours each day during the early voting period.
People who want to utilize early in-person voting can find their poll location on the state’s website and enter their address. The early voting locations may differ from what they are on election day, as some municipalities in the area have decided to share polling locations as a way to save money.
On election day, people can vote at their normal poll.
Steve Schulwitz can be reached at 989-358-5689 or sschulwitz@thealpenanews.com. Follow him on Twitter @ss_alpenanews.com.