Emmet County prepared for early voting
PETOSKEY — The Emmet County Clerk’s Office is prepared and ready for the nine days of early voting that will precede the upcoming presidential primary election on Feb. 27.
Early voting is set to take place from Saturday, Feb. 17 through Sunday, Feb. 25 throughout the state.
“Every municipality in the state is required to provide nine days of early in-person voting for every state and federal election,” said Emmet County Clerk Suzanne Kanine at Monday’s Emmet County Board of Commissioners meeting.
Kanine noted that early voting is an addition to voting options, and does not change any other voting method like mail-in or absentee.
“There has been a lot of confusion going on right now about what forms are being sent out and how our elections are working,” she said. “Nothing has changed with our absentee voting or our Election Day in-person voting. That is all the same. This is in addition to that.”
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More: Find your early voting location in Northern Michigan
Michigan allows municipalities three options when it comes to organizing early voting:
Enter into a county agreement, authorizing the county to conduct early voting
Enter into a municipal agreement with one or more municipalities
Offer early voting as a single municipality
“All of the municipalities in Emmet County decided to join together,” Kanine said. “They were all very happy to do that with us. So we are holding one centralized site for all 18 jurisdictions in the county.”
The early voting location for Emmet County voters will be at the VFW Post 2051, 599 W. Conway Road in Harbor Springs.
Kanine said she has collaborated with all of the townships, cities and villages in the county to sort through supplies, workers and whatever else is needed.
“They’ve been very helpful to me and to my staff over the last several months,” she said.
Kanine also added that the VFW has been “very, very accommodating.”
“They have been wonderful to let us use their site for all three elections that we will have to do this for this year,” she said.
This week, Kanine and her staff started moving equipment over to the VFW Post and will start training election workers.
“In the next couple of days we will train over 100 workers to work these nine days of early voting,” she said.
For more information, visit emmetcounty.org/officials-departments/county-clerk/elections.
— Contact Jillian Fellows at jfellows@petoskeynews.com.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Emmet County prepared for early voting
