(Community Matters 186) Battle Creek Consolidates Voting Precincts Ahead of May 2026 Election

Voting logistics rarely make headlines until something feels different on Election Day, like a new polling place, a shorter line, or a smoother process than you expected. Battle Creek City Clerk Victoria Hauser unpacks what changed and why, using real numbers from early voting in Michigan to show how voter habits are reshaping local elections in Calhoun County.

Hauser talks about what voting turnout patterns mean for staffing, how early voting can take pressure off precincts, and why wait times can drop when voting is spread across multiple days.  Hauser also explains the layers of election accuracy testing, public tests, audits, and recounts that help verify voting machine results. Need to confirm your polling place, check your registration, find drop boxes, or preview your ballot? Use the Michigan Voter Information Center website, or call the Battle Creek City Clerk’s office at 269-966-3348.

Episode Resources

Michigan Voter Information Center Website

Battle Creek City Clerk's Office Website

ABOUT COMMUNITY MATTERS
Former WBCK Morning Show host Richard Piet (2014-2017) returns to host Community Matters, an interview program focused on community leaders and newsmakers in and around Battle Creek. Community Matters is heard Saturdays, 8:00 AM Eastern on WBCK-FM (95.3) and anytime at battlecreekpodcast.com.

Community Matters is sponsored by Lakeview Ford Lincoln and produced by Livemic Communications.

Transcript

Where To Hear The Show

Richard Piet 0:02

Thanks for being with us for Community Matters Saturdays on 95.3 FM. Might be finding us at Battle Creek Podcast.com. Quite a few voices from Calhoun County that are there too, some of which you have not heard here on our radio version of the program. So stop on by and check that out at Battle Creekpodcast.com. You can also type at your favorite podcast hosting, Community Matters Calhoun County, and you'll find us there too. And you can subscribe, follow whichever you see there, according to whichever directory you're looking at. And then you'll get a little alert when these new episodes come

Why Voting Sites Are Changing

Richard Piet 0:46

available. You might have been with us last week and heard uh Mayor Mark Banke and Commissioner Jim Lance talking a little bit about our upcoming election. And in that process, the notion that we've streamlined our voting locations here to give us more information about that is the Battle Creek City Clerk, Victoria Hauser. Hi, Victoria.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Hi, thanks for having me.

Richard Piet 1:11

Well, thank you. This is uh important information if folks like to show up and vote. Now, you'll remember that uh we've talked uh quite a bit on this program about the idea that we've had early voting in recent uh elections, and that has given us some perspective on where resources should be allocated. Is that true?

SPEAKER_00 1:36

That is true, yeah.

Early Voting Turnout Tells A Story

Richard Piet 1:37

What did you find out?

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Well, we found with early voting, it it started off very slow. It started off in February of 2024 for the presidential primary. We had very, very low voter turnout over the nine days at our municipal early voting site. We had less than 50 people per day. Um, repeated again in August. People didn't seem to care. Now, neither of those elections have huge turnout like they do in November, but we had hoped for more. And then boy, did the voters show up in November. It was incredible. Well, the very first day we had over 1,200 voters on that first Saturday. Oh my. Um, we were one of 12 early voting sites in the state of Michigan that had over 1,000 voters on that very first date. So that's incredible for Battle Creek, um, along with our partners Springfield, Bedford, and Penfield, but it was still quite a change from what we were used to. And we ended up pretty much having a thousand voters every day during early voting. So it was wonderful.

Richard Piet 2:39

Man, the whole notion behind that is let's make it easier to get the job done. And uh, it might have taken a little while, but uh people latched onto it.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

They did. Yeah.

unknown 2:50

Wow.

Richard Piet 2:51

How did that affect your processes and your staffing? And you know, you try

Shorter Lines Through Better Planning

Richard Piet 2:56

to read the tea leaves, right? And presume the kind of approach that you need to take. Did it work out?

SPEAKER_00 3:02

So for us, November worked out, it made it so that our precincts were not hit quite as hard as they would have been. Our precincts still had 44% of the people who voted for the November in the November election, they still went to the precincts on election day. So just over 44%. But we did have 26% who did participate in early voting who may not have otherwise. So we could have expected them to go to the polls if we hadn't had early voting. So it did ease it up a little bit in the precincts. We got word from all of our chair people that the lines were approximately 20 minutes on election day instead of being an hour or so, which was great.

Richard Piet 3:43

Yeah, there's your uh icing on the cake, I suppose, is that uh if you have a limited window, this spreading out of days allows that to be less so uh in terms of waiting on election day if that's what you'd rather do.

SPEAKER_00 3:59

Yep.

Richard Piet 3:59

And of course, the uh the absentees figured into all of that too, didn't they?

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Yep, we had just over 31% who voted by absentee ballot this last time.

Richard Piet 4:09

Yeah, okay. So you come away from this, Victoria, and you say, maybe we have a better way to approach this. Yeah, what did you see?

Precinct Consolidation And Dual Polling

SPEAKER_00 4:18

So the state legislation at the end of 2023 changed the number of active voters per precinct from 2,999 to 4,999, which meant our precincts could have more voters, which means we could start consolidating and eliminating some precincts with the expectation that our voters will continue to go to early voting and relieve some of the pressure on election day, it makes sense to start consolidating from a staffing standpoint, from efficiencies and from financial cost.

Richard Piet 4:53

When you realize that you say, hey, we could uh save a few dollars here and and streamline the process, what does that mean for us going forward?

SPEAKER_00 5:04

So when I first started here in 2012, we had 23 precincts and we had about 32 ballot styles. Those ballot styles are created by a precinct that has two school districts in it, uh-huh. Or more. Um, we did have one precinct that had four ballot styles. So, what we've done through the years, we first eliminated two precincts, and then this last time we eliminated eight more. So we went from 23 down to 13 precincts. We tried really hard with most of our polling locations. Most of our polling locations were called dual polling locations. So they had two precincts located in them. Um, examples are four and 10 were in our Urbindale area, six and nine were just off Riverside at Chapel Hill. So we tried really hard to take wherever there was a dual polling location and consolidate those instead of trying to split them and move them all over. That way, all of our voters that were in a dual polling location have not experienced any real change because they're still going to the same polling location. They're still getting in the same line. It's just hopefully there'll be less people filling up that space because of the early voting opportunity.

Richard Piet 6:13

And when you say dual polling, it means that there might be two different territories of voters coming to the same location.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Right. There's still City of Battle Creek voters, but if they may be from a different mis precinct or a different um ward.

Richard Piet 6:27

Okay. So this means uh that uh if we are, as you say, spreading out the voting population across several days, then that doesn't mean we have to have the same kinds of resources in the same places for the same amounts of time. It spreads out, it's different. It makes sense, right? That that some precincts now just don't need the same personnel.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

Yep. So where we had a dual polling location, if we had six inspectors per precinct, 12 at one location, we would certainly not have 12 inspectors for one new location, but we probably couldn't go as bare bones as six when we needed six before. We might go to eight inspectors now instead of 12 at one location.

Richard Piet 7:11

Boy, this is a lot of analyzing that you have to do here. Yep. Uh, I presume others of you in your position are dealing with the same thing and and uh trying to figure out where the resources should go. Do you collaborate on those? Do you share ideas? How does it work?

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Yeah, the Clerks Association throughout Michigan, it's a really great collaborating organization. I work a lot with our partners here in Calhoun County. I work very closely with Chris, who's at the Springfield City Clerk's Office. Joyce in Bedford and Kathy in Penfield. We're part of that municipal agreement and we share our D ideas all the time. Chris did go from two precincts down to one precinct in Springfield.

New Machines And Real Budget Math

SPEAKER_00 7:55

Penfield went from three precincts down to two, and Bedford went from four precincts down to three. So we're all taking a good look at how doing this together really works for everybody.

Richard Piet 8:06

And it saves money going forward that you can now say maybe we can do this or that instead.

SPEAKER_00 8:14

Yep, it gives us a lot more opportunities.

Richard Piet 8:16

I saw, I think in in your notes to the commission, I saw something about looking at equipment replacement and things of that nature that now seem a little more possible since the resources are different. Is that right?

SPEAKER_00 8:30

Yes. Every 10 years we are to get new election equipment. It's considered outdated at that time, and our maintenance contracts end after 10 years. So we last got equipment in 2017. We were very fortunate because there were HABA funds, which is Help America Vote Act funds. They paid for the majority of our equipment. Those funds were all used up in 2017. There are no more funds. So we've been told to start planning for $20,000 per precinct. So the consolidation of eight precincts immediately helps us by saving $160,000 just in equipment, not future costs such as programming, maintenance, contracts, staffing, everything else.

Richard Piet 9:14

Wow. Still, this is uh money that you thought might have been spent in a certain way, and now it might not. Right. Every 10 years, huh? The equipment turns over. 2017 doesn't sound like nine years ago, but it is.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

It is, yeah.

Richard Piet 9:33

So this happens quicker than uh you might think it does, and so now you have to plan for that next year.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

We do. So I put it in the city's capital improvement funds because it is such a huge cost.

Richard Piet 9:46

Yeah. And do we own those machines or do we just lease them? How does it work?

SPEAKER_00 9:51

We own them the first, I think, five years. We cannot sell them or share them with another municipality, but after that, we can start selling or sharing. Generally, when we sell them, particularly in 2017 equipment bought then, because the state paid for all of it, we instead contact the state and say, hey, and we did this with our high-speed voting equipment for the AV counting board. We said Bedford is gaining more absentee voters. We need bigger equipment, which you can kind of see behind me. We have two of the high-speed scanners. So we for a dollar, we sold our high-speed scanner, smaller equipment to Bedford so that they could start their own absentee voter counting board and have a high-speed scanner to process them. So we are allowed to do that.

Richard Piet 10:42

And the dollar for them is a great price.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

Yes. Yep.

Richard Piet 10:47

And so when you get to the end of that 10 years, are they ready to be retired, would you say, if they've got high mileage?

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Well, I'll be honest with you. The equipment that we have, we have um Dominion voting equipment, and it is incredible. It does a great job. It's very, very accurate. We do preliminary testing on them, then we also do a public accuracy test. There's often recounts. Um, we had a recount in 2024. There's audits that occur after an election. And I will tell you, the votes turn out the same, they don't change, which verifies to us that the equipment tabulates the ballots properly. So there, I believe they could continue, but I also understand concerns about updating software for security purposes and better efficiencies.

Richard Piet 11:33

We think about machines that run constantly or often, and uh we have uh visions of our printers jamming and things like that. Obviously, these machines uh run well and they're looked after, aren't they?

SPEAKER_00 11:49

Yep, we have maintenance done on them every other year, and then the vendor is available if we have any problems. It's just a matter of calling them and they will come and find out what's wrong. And if they have to, they'll replace it or they'll repair it, whatever works best.

Verify Your Polling Location Fast

Richard Piet 12:04

All right. So 13 precincts in the city of Battle Creek now. If folks want to verify where they should vote, where do they do that?

SPEAKER_00 12:13

They can go to Michiganvote.mi.gov. They can go to MVC, which is the Michigan Voter Information Center. If they just start typing that into their browser, it will come up with the website. There's a lot they can do on that website. Not they can look to see if they're on our absentee voter list. They can make sure that their address is correct, they can find where their drop boxes are, and of course, they can find out where their polling location is. And if they want, they can get an advanced review of what's on the ballot so that when they go to the precinct for early voting, they're prepared and they know what's on there and how they might want to vote.

Richard Piet 12:50

All right. Michigan Voter Information Center. Just open up a search engine and type that and you'll find it. Of course, folks can call your office if they'd rather, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:00

Yep.

Richard Piet 13:00

What's that number?

SPEAKER_00 13:01

It's 269-966-3348.

Richard Piet 13:06

3348-966-3348.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

Yep, and even if they're not in the city of Battle Creek, we have the statewide qualified voter file. So if they need to know, we can look them up.

Richard Piet 13:18

Well, that's very kind. All right. 269-966-3348. If you want to talk with the Battle Creek City Clerk's office about voting and and these sorts of uh questions. That's interesting that one shy of 3,000 voters per precinct is now able to be one shy of 5,000 voters. Is that directly as a result of early voting that if you just spread out the days, now you've got more elbow room for people?

SPEAKER_00 13:48

Yep. And it is because of early voting.

Richard Piet 13:50

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

The hope is to get to one third for early voting, one third for absentee, and one third for in precinct day voting. And we're we're kind of getting there. We're okay.

Richard Piet 14:03

Yeah, well, and we presume, I mean, it would be nice if it's this way all the time, but we presume a presidential election always sort of have your wind uh uh in in your sale because uh more people tend to vote. But do it anyway, and this should still sort out decently. It just takes a while for people to change their habits. It does if they want to, right. Did you meet anybody who said, you know, I'm only going on election day?

SPEAKER_00 14:30

We do meet people who say that. Um, we met several people who said that in no or in February and August, and then we kept encouraging them, and they showed up on for the November election at the Cole Family Center, and they absolutely loved it.

Richard Piet 14:45

Yeah, so it it ends up being okay. Change is difficult sometimes, Victoria.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

Yes, we try to make it easy though.

Richard Piet 14:52

Well, you have done that, and look at the results of this. How interesting. And now maybe we get a little shot in the arm for the equipment as uh the uh turnover of equipment happens in 2027. All right, Victoria Hauser, Battle Creek City Clerk. Thanks for the update. Thank you.