Ilsa Minor | Daily Press Above, voters were lined up outside the Wells Township Hall around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, waiting for their chance to vote. Unlike in Wells Township, which experienced lines throughout the day, many other communities and precincts experienced early-morning surges followed by a steady stream of voters.

ESCANABA — After months of planning, preparation, and more than a little uncertainty, polling places across the nation opened Tuesday.

Many communities were expecting lower turnouts at the polls, due to a nationwide push for voting by mail, which has been advocated at the state and national level as a way to ensure voters have their voices heard even if they are unable or unwilling to vote in person due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in Delta County that wasn’t the case.

“It’s been very busy. Even though we’ve had a large turnout for the absentee ballots, we’re having an even larger turnout at the polls,” said Delta County Clerk Nancy Przewrocki.

Lines were not uncommon at polling places across the county, especially in the morning. At 7 a.m., the line for voters at the Ford River Township Hall stretched outside the building. At Escanaba Precinct 1, election workers reported there was an early-morning surge of voters, but that the stream of voters had tapered off by mid-day. At 12:47 p.m., 401 votes had been cast at the precinct.

One of the hardest hit voting locations was the Escanaba Township Hall, where voters lined up outside the building throughout the day and the usually quiet streets surrounding the building were congested with traffic.

The high voter turnout doesn’t mean absentee voting didn’t make up a sizable portion of the county’s votes. In Escanaba, roughly 3,400 absentee ballots were mailed to voters. By early Monday afternoon, about 2,900 had been turned in, but more were expected to be dropped off as the day went on.

“We’re seeing a large number of absentee voters, which is good. I think that’s a good thing because it’ll pull some people from being at the voting precincts so it’s not so congested, and (it will help) keep everyone at arms length and keep everyone safe,” said Escanaba City Clerk Phil DeMay.

Gladstone had a similar response from voters who wanted to avoid places. By Monday afternoon, the city had issued 1,459 ballots and received 1,288 of those ballots back from voters — more than double the number of absentee ballots cast in 2016.

“They just keep coming today,” Gladstone City Clerk Kim Berry said Monday, noting absentee ballots could still be cast until the polls closed Tuesday.

Berry noted that there were a few voters who intended to vote in person, but were forced to quarantine unexpectedly. For those voters, the city did a few contactless drop-offs and pick-ups so their votes would still be counted.

“We’re lucky we’re a small community where we can do things like that,” said Berry.

Clerks also had concerns about the availability of polling workers, who could theoretically be removed from service at any time if they were forced to quarantine or fell ill with COVID-19. Despite the concerns, there were no precincts that were understaffed as a result of the virus according to Przewrocki.

“We had to replace a few because of quarantine or exposure to COVID, but we got those replacements in place and we have enough workers,” she said.

In Escanaba, the city had an alternate list of workers, some of whom were tapped for the election. Gladstone wasn’t affected by worker sicknesses or quarantines and actually added a few election workers between the August primary and Tuesday’s General Election.

Across the county, election workers did their best to make in-person voting as safe as possible by providing masks for voters, PPE for workers, offering hand sanitizer, and wiping down tables as frequently as possible while the polls were open. While masks were encouraged at all voting locations, but both DeMay and Berry noted that voters who came to the polls without masks were not to be turned away for not wearing them.

Because absentee ballot counting began in the morning Tuesday, the last votes counted across the county were primarily from voters to opted to vote in-person. Przewrocki didn’t anticipate any serious delays in counting ballots.