A record 4 million Michigan voters projected for Nov. 6 election

After a record voter turnout in the August primary, local clerks are gearing up for an even bigger showing for the Nov. 6 general election.

Chris Thomas, a national voting expert and the former longtime director of elections for the Secretary of State, said Tuesday he expects statewide turnout in November to be in the neighborhood of 4 million voters, setting a new record.

"I think it will be higher than in 2006 when we hit 3.8 million," he said. "I generally wouldn't use primary results to make predictions about the general, but this was a big jump. I particularly looked at the Oakland County returns, where they generally get between 193,000 and 200,000 voters, and they were at 320,000.

"There's a bit of a pent-up desire to vote, not only with all the statewide offices open, but the ballot proposals are stimulating enthusiasm."

Detroit officials project that between 41 and 46 percent of the city's 470,000 registered voters will cast a ballot Nov. 6, marking a significantly higher turnout than in previous elections. Voter turnout in both 2010 and 2014 was 31.4 percent.

Absentee ballots statewide are holding relatively steady compared with previous midterm election years. In 2014, 594,466 absentee ballots had been requested by Oct. 6 and 16,072 had been returned. So far this year, 594,305 absentee ballots have been requested and 16,620 have been returned. But in the state's most populous county of Wayne, the number of absentee ballots that have been returned by voters has more than tripled.



https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2018/10/09/election-voter-turnout/1576295002/