Here are Kent and Ottawa counties' voter turnout rates for the Nov. 5, 2024 election

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – Overall voter turnout across West Michigan appears to have dipped in the Tuesday, Nov. 5 election compared to 2020, despite initial surges in early voting and absentee ballots this year.

Kent County's unofficial voter turnout rate in this year's general election was 68.83%, with 360,861 ballots cast out of 524,271 registered voters, according to unofficial results from the Kent County Clerk's Office.

In comparison, turnout for the 2020 presidential election was 72.57%, which was the highest Kent County had seen since the 2004 presidential election.

This year's turnout was the lowest since the 2012 general election, when turnout was 68.05%. However, Kent County Elections Coordinator Mike Sullivan noted that this year's results are still unofficial, and he expects the turnout rate to change slightly during the certification process.

"As we go through the county canvas process for the next two weeks – we're aiming to certify on Nov. 19 – we expect that voter turnout number to adjust slightly and I think we'll probably be a little bit closer to normal tendencies," he told MLive/The Grand Rapids Press on Wednesday. "But we were prepared for turnout to be around 70-75%, so we're in the ballpark right now.

In Ottawa County, voter turnout was 75.54% in this year's general election, which is only slightly down from the 76.76% turnout in the 2020 election.

Ottawa County Clerk Justin Roebuck said it's hard to speculate why voter turnout dipped this year, but that it's still "right on par" with what the county's average turnout is in a presidential election.

Interestingly enough, Roebuck said, early and absentee voter turnout in Ottawa County was almost the same this year as it was in the 2020 election.

There were 73,938 absentee ballots cast in Ottawa County this year, and 33,1270 ballots cast in the nine-day early voting period, meaning only 40.4% of ballots were cast on Election Day.

That's similar to the 2020 election, when roughly 100,000 of the 169,405 votes were cast via absentee ballot, which translated to about 41% of ballots cast in the polls on Election Day in Ottawa County that year.

Early voter turnout was high across West Michigan in this election, despite it being low in the August and February elections. This was the first year that nine days of early voting was available to Michigan voters, after Proposal 2 was passed in 2022 .

Roebuck said he attributes that to both political parties and campaigns at the top of the presidential ticket encouraging their supporters to vote early in this election.

In Kent County, more than 96,000 voters participated in the nine-day early voting period, according to the Secretary of State's voter dashboard . There were also 142,182 absentee ballots returned in this election, which means nearly two-thirds of all ballots in Kent County were cast via absentee or early voting this year.

Roebuck said the higher participation in early voting translated to a smoother Election Day, and also more people being able to vote who might have been unable to vote on Tuesday due to work or other reasons.

Even though there were initial long lines on the first day of early voting on Saturday, Oct. 26, everyone was grateful for the opportunity to vote early, Roebuck said.

"What was really incredible was the positivity of the voters who were in line," he said. "(It was) truly a really positive experience overall for our election workers, for our voters. Just the number of anecdotal incidents where voters were just overall really happy to be participating in the process and I think really enjoyed early voting, and then again, we did see the benefits of that yesterday, in terms of just how smoothly things ran in the precincts."

Michigan clerks were able to start counting absentee ballots up to eight days before Election Day this year, which allowed for clerks to tally up the results quicker on Election Night, Roebuck said. In comparison, clerks in the 2020 election could only start pre-processing absentee ballots 10 hours before the election, and that did not include tabulation.

Both Sullivan and Roebuck said the ballot counting process in their counties went faster and more efficiently on Tuesday night than it has in past years, thanks to more voters participating in early voting and being able to tabulate the ballots several days in advance.

Sullivan recalled how in the 2020 election, ballots were still being adjudicated at 10 a.m. on Wednesday after Election Day.

"(This year,) I just felt like we were so organized," Sullivan said. "We just spent so much time in the last year and a half, especially with early voting, training our election inspectors, training our clerks to follow state law, follow best practice and guidance from the Bureau of Elections and from the county. Our inspectors and our clerks did an amazing job with closing down their early voting tabulators and reporting those election results very quickly."

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After the election, each county's Board of Canvassers – which is composed of two Republicans and two Democrats – meets to review the materials compiled by election inspectors within each precinct and absentee counting board, including double checking the results of each precinct to ensure the number of votes reported is the same as the number of ballots issued.

After the canvass is concluded, the results are certified by the board, signed by the county clerk as official, and are then forwarded to the state for inclusion into the statewide canvass conducted by the Board of State Canvassers. All Board of Canvassers meetings are open to the public and media.

County clerks have 14 business days after the election to certify their election results.