Michigan absentee ballots break records. See totals by city/county.

With less than a month to go before Michigan’s Tuesday, Aug. 6 primary election, more than 1.5 million absentee ballot applications have been submitted and 12% of them have been completed and returned, breaking previous state records for the August primary, according to the Michigan Secretary of State’s office.

As of July 9 – 28 days before Election Day – 157,883 more voters in Michigan have requested an absentee ballot than during the same period in the 2020 primary election.

Of the 1.5 million requested, 178,031 were completed and returned. That is 67,917 more than at the same time in 2020.

“In 2020, we had the highest voter turnout in Michigan history,” Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said in a press release. “It’s exciting to see that we are on track to surpass that high turnout in 2024.”

What primary record will be up for grabs in the August primary? In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, 1.6 million votes were cast by mail in Michigan.

Voting by mail has become a major election issue across the country, and Michigan is one of the states in the spotlight. In 2018, the state passed sweeping reforms to its voter registration process with the passage of Proposal 3. This law significantly eased access to voting by mail and has seen increasingly higher turnout in early voting in every election since then.

At the county level, more than 20% of registered voters in 14 of Michigan’s 83 counties have requested mail-in ballots.

The highest rate of absentee ballot requests this year is in Leelanau County, where nearly 30% of its 21,889 voters have applied. In contrast, 8% of Luce County’s 4,697 registered voters have applied for absentee ballots, the lowest rate in the state.

Below is a map of all precincts sorted by the percentage of registered voters who requested a mail-in ballot.

Hover over or click on the districts to see the number of applications and completed ballots.

Although there are still four weeks to go, voters are already returning their completed ballots at a rapid pace: 21 counties have submitted 15% or more of the applications.

Dickinson County in the Upper Peninsula leads the state with 24% of its 2,892 applications completed and returned. On the other hand, of Antrim County’s 4,017 applications, only one was returned. That’s a rate of less than 1%, the lowest in the state.

Below is a searchable database of Michigan cities and towns and the number of absentee ballot requests and completed and returned applications as of July 9.

The deadline to request an absentee ballot by mail or online is the Friday before Election Day at 5:00 p.m. or in person at the clerk’s office at 8:00 p.m. However, the SOS office recommends submitting the application online or by mail at least 15 days before Election Day.

For more data reports from Michigan, visit MLive.com/Data.