Michigan early voting opens Saturday, and small-town leaders say the nine-day mandate is straining their budgets. Nearly 790,000 ballots are already in

LANSING, Mich. — Early voting sites open across Michigan on Saturday, Oct. 24, under the nine-day requirement voters wrote into the state constitution in 2022. A new University of Michigan survey shows many of the local governments paying for it are not happy with the bill.

Two weeks before the Nov. 3 election, 789,572 Michiganders had already voted, or 10.7% of active registered voters, the Michigan Department of State said Tuesday. Nearly all of those were mail ballots; only 96 people had voted at an early voting site, since most sites don’t open until Saturday. Some places, including East Lansing and Grand Rapids, opened early voting sites this week.

What the numbers show. Voters had requested 2,121,458 mail ballots, a 17% increase from the same point before the 2022 midterm, the state said. Returns are up much less. By our math from the state’s figures, 789,476 returned mail ballots is only about 2% more than the 771,967 returned two weeks before the 2022 election. That leaves more than 1.3 million requested ballots still out.

What local officials say it costs. In the spring 2026 Michigan Public Policy Survey, 41% of city and township leaders said nine days of early in-person voting has had a mostly or very negative effect on how their community runs elections, the university’s Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy reported. Only 7% said the same about expanded ballot drop boxes.

The split runs by size. In communities of 1,500 to 5,000 people, 43% of officials reported a negative effect, while 68% of officials in the largest places called it positive. Among places reporting high fiscal stress, 52% said early voting has hurt. Clerks were more upbeat than their bosses: 43% of clerks called the effect positive, while 44% of mayors, township supervisors and managers called it negative. Half of Republican officials reported harm, compared with about a third of independents and 18% of Democrats, after the researchers accounted for community size and type.

The comments were blunt. One official told surveyors that nine days of early voting “requires a budget of 6x higher than a year without early voting, largely due to increased payroll of election workers.” Another wrote that it is “very expensive to have poll workers available for 9 days when we get less than 10 people voting early,” and suggested one weekend day for small townships. “Dollars that pay for nine days of poll workers can’t be spent to fill potholes,” said Stephanie Leiser, the center’s director and a co-author of the brief.

The survey went to all 1,856 general-purpose local governments in Michigan from March 30 to June 5, and 1,328 responded.

Return your ballot by hand. State officials are urging anyone still holding a mail ballot to skip the mail and hand-deliver it, signed and sealed, to the clerk’s office or an assigned drop box, or bring it to an early voting site or polling place. Ballots must reach the clerk by 8 p.m. on Election Day. Track yours at mi.gov/trackballot.

How to vote. Michigan’s deadline to register online or by mail was Oct. 19; residents can still register in person at their local clerk’s office with proof of residency through 8 p.m. on Election Day. Early in-person voting runs Oct. 24 through Nov. 1, with sites open at least eight hours a day; find yours at mi.gov/earlyvoting. Absentee ballot applications are due by 5 p.m. Oct. 30 by mail or online, or by 4 p.m. Nov. 2 in person at the clerk’s office. Polls are open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 3. County canvasses finish by Nov. 17, and the Board of State Canvassers certifies by Nov. 23. Sample ballots and polling places are at the Michigan Voter Information Center.

More from the capital region is on our Lansing page.

Sources:
Michigan Department of State, “More than 780,000 Michigan voters have cast their ballot two weeks before Election Day; active registered voter turnout reaches 10.7%,” Oct. 20, 2026 (ballot requests and returns, 2022 comparison, early voting dates, hand-delivery advice), https://www.michigan.gov/sos/resources/news/2026/10/20/more-than-780000-michigan-voters-have-cast-their-ballot-two-weeks-before-election-day
University of Michigan Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy, “Small Michigan communities feel early voting strain,” Oct. 11, 2026 (survey findings, Leiser quote, methodology), https://closup.umich.edu/news/2026/small-michigan-communities-feel-early-voting-strain
Debra Horner, Max Wei and Stephanie Leiser, MPPS Policy Brief on election reforms, October 2026 (results by community size, fiscal stress, position and party; local officials’ comments), https://closup.umich.edu/sites/default/files/2026-10/MPPS-Spring-2026-Election-Reforms-Brief-Final.pdf
Michigan Department of State, early voting site lookup, https://www.michigan.gov/earlyvoting
Michigan Voter Information Center, https://mvic.sos.state.mi.us/
Photo: Warren LeMay, “Michigan State Capitol, Capitol Avenue, Lansing, MI.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/), cropped and color-adjusted, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Michigan_State_Capitol,_Capitol_Avenue,_Lansing,_MI.jpg

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