by Sylvia Benavidez
The first presidential early election since the law passed in 2022 brought new voters, entire families, and more couples to the polls. In an interview the day before the Tuesday election, Kimberly Hinkley, Calhoun County Clerk and Register of Deeds shared, “Watching the people come in, it’s been a lot of families, a lot of couples. All across the generation, we have had many first-time voters. But it didn’t mean we just had first-time voters at 18. We had people in their senior years, their golden years that were first time voters in this election, and I haven’t seen that kind of a turnout in our senior adult population being first time voters since the 2016 election. It just shows how important this election is for people to make their voice heard. So, we had a lot of first-time voters here, early voting.”
Hinkley noted that two other opportunities for early election had much lower numbers and reported that a lot of time was spent explaining the new process. “We started early voting in February with the presidential primary and that brought about a lot of confusion for voters because it was the first time. It was a lot of ‘how did this come about’, ‘who decided we are doing this?’ Those types of questions. Well, the people passed this. You voted on it in 2022.”
The numbers verified her observations. “We had a total in February of 825 voters across both early voting sites. So that was OK, and this was a great start.” But then her office saw a steep drop for August to 671 voters. “That was kind of surprising. We were trying to help educate people on the importance of the August primary. That that can help to determine who you see on your November ballot.”
So, her office wasn’t sure what to expect during the nine days of early election but decided to plan for larger numbers. “We service 19 municipalities at this site. We could have the potential of 250 people coming through per hour if everybody went to show up. So, we tried to plan for the large turnout, and we hope we found something in the middle.”
Hinkley was not disappointed with the numbers at the county building or other sites. On their first day open, they almost made the total of early voting for February and they passed the August totals. “This is our first major election with early voting. We had a huge turnout on our first day on Oct. 26. This site had 746 people turn out, so it was a steady stream, a line to the elevator. We were just amazed at watching the people continuously come in, so it was very encouraging.”
Calhoun County had two sites for early voting, one in Marshall at the county building and the other in Battle Creek. She said, “There are 23 municipalities in the county between the cities and the townships. We had four municipalities that joined together to form an early vote site. So, that’s the City of Battle Creek, the City of Springfield, and Bedford and Pennfield Townships. They went and did a municipal agreement. That site was at the Kool Family Center.” The total for all the sites for Calhoun County registered voters, Hinckley explained is approximately 112,984. The staff at the Calhoun County building saw 5, 502. The number of Albion residents coming to vote early during the presidential election was 290 out of a possible 5,954 registered voters and Marshall residents equaled 1005 out of a potential of 5088 registered voters.
The school bond proposal was also a hot issue in the community and Hinkley shared the early voting breakdown for that population. Marshall Public School early voters coming to the polls early totaled 2,426 which included residents of Albion and Marshall cities, and the townships of Albion, Convis, Eckford, Fredonia, Lee, Marengo, Marshall, Newton, Sheridan that voted early.
Hinkley is proud of her staff and the public and is happy to report no violent incidents happened at any of the early polls. She also wants to assure everyone that they have taken many precautions to protect against voter fraud. Often individuals get mail for voters that no longer live at that particular residence. She explained, “What we encourage, if someone gets a piece of mail for someone who has moved or is deceased to get that to their local clerk and say I am sure they are marked off on your qualified voter file, but here is what I have received.” Her clerks also scour the obituaries and update the voter list on a regular basis.
“Up to 30 days to at least two weeks before the election, we are doing that daily.” Funeral homes also run death records electronically,” said Hinkley. She also shared that organizations can use old voter lists to send out their campaigning materials, but it still doesn’t hurt to speak with clerk’s office to make sure the name in question has been removed from the current voting list.
