ESCANABA — Changes to the state’s voting law could mean residents will have two places to cast their ballots next year.

In 2022, Michigan voters supported Proposal 2, a series of changes to the state Constitution that aimed to make voting more accessible to residents. Among the changes was a provision that every resident have access to nine consecutive days of early, in-person voting before all statewide and federal elections

While the change guarantees more options for residents and allows for weekend voting, the proposal, like most constitutional amendments, did not prescribe rules for early voting. Those procedures were set by the state Legislature in amendments to the state’s election law, PA 116, which will officially take effect 91 days after the adjournment of the regular legislative session — making the 2024 presidential primary elections the first time early voting is required to be available.

“That’s quite a hardship on the cities and townships to provide, each to provide nine days of early voting,” County Clerk Nancy Przewrocki told the Delta County Board Tuesday.

After meeting with county clerks from across the state and the Michigan Bureau of Elections, Przewrocki met with local clerks from Delta County’s cities and townships to discuss the creation of a single polling location for early voting.

It will require six election workers every day for the nine day period to open the proposed central voting location, which would contain two precincts. Similar to how absentee voting boards function as precincts, the newly-created precincts would be open to voters who belong to other voting precincts.

However, allowing voters from across the county to vote at a single location is a tall order, as different precincts often have different questions on their ballots, such as school board elections or millage request. To bring the project to fruition, the county needs to acquire two tabulation machines — one for each of the new precincts — and special touch screen capable terminal that can print ballots on demand.

“Otherwise we’d have to have a stack of ballots from every single precinct,” said Przewrocki, who noted there are 22 physical precincts with unique ballots in the county.

Purchasing the equipment will cost approximately $25,000, which will initially be taken from the county’s general fund. Przewrocki is in the process of submitting a grant to the state that would reimburse the county for the expenditure.

“It would be much more expensive for each of the townships because they’d each have to purchase the equipment,” said Przewrocki.

Where this centralized voting hub would be located is still up in the air, but there are a few strong contenders. The county has been looking at the logistics of Bay College, the Escanaba Civic Center, and, following an offer from Wells Township, the Wells Township Hall.

“They’re set up already to be precincts and we could lock up our equipment. They have a safe there. At Bay College we would run into some security issues of where we would be able to lock up the equipment every night for nine nights in a row,” said Przewrocki.

Other safety concerns were raised by residents at Tuesday’s meeting, who noticed the machines being considered for the new voting center would be manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems.

Dominion has been the target of a number of unsubstantiated claims of election interference and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and the loss of former President Donald Trump. These claims have often been made by high ranking or public figures and have resulted in multiple lawsuits, most notably, Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News Network, a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the conservative network that was ultimately settled for $787 million.

According to Przewrocki, the machines being purchased are Dominion because that is the system already in use by the county. However, she is confident in the security of the machines, citing the three tests conducted on machines prior to every election, a score of recounts conducted by hand since she became clerk, and regular audits of local elections.

“We audit the precincts randomly. Three or four precincts are picked and I go in with the local clerk and one other person and we hand count. So in the 2020 election we counted the Trump/Biden race and those results came out exactly, exactly the same as what the tabulator came out,” she said.

Przewrocki said the county would continue monitoring the machines going forward.

“I feel very confident about the equipment that we’ve used so far and we will continue to audit the ballots against the machines after the elections because I think that’s the best way to know that the ballots counted exactly the way they should,” she said.