Hillsdale County mailed new voter identification cards to registered voters last week, following redistricting in the wake of the 2020 census.
Chief Deputy County Clerk Abe Dane said the cards will show voters’ congressional, state representative, and state senate districts among other information, but are not required to vote.
State law requires township, city, or village clerks to mail the cards to voters when they register to vote, change their address, or are affected by a district or precinct change.
Hillsdale County Clerk Marney Kast said the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission moved Hillsdale County from the 7th Congressional District to the 5th Congressional District, renumbered its state representative district from 58 to 35, and split the county between two state senatorial districts—16 and 17.
“I’m so thankful the jurisdictions themselves weren’t split in half,” Kast said.
She said when jurisdictions are split, it requires clerks to create a different “ballot style” for each part of the split jurisdiction because they will have different candidates on their ballots. This makes it especially difficult for the clerks doing the programming — putting the information candidates file with the city, village, or township clerks onto the ballot.
Dane said because the redistricting affected all of Hillsdale County, every registered voter in the county must receive a new voter identification card. Kast said as of April 13 there are 33,713 registered voters in Hillsdale County.
Dane said city or township clerks send out new cards individually as needed, for example when someone moves or marries and changes their name.
“We decided to help our local township and city clerks by handling that at the county level to save money by placing a bulk print and mailing order with a vendor,” Dane said.
Kast said Hillsdale County chose Spectrum Printers in Lenawee County to print the cards and mail them to every registered voter. Jurisdictions will each pay their share of the cost.
Kast said every county in Michigan has a list of registered voters in the county called a qualified voter file. She said they sent their file to Spectrum Printers.
Tim Allshouse, election services manager at Spectrum Printers, said the cards were mailed last week.
“In the last 10 years we’ve been very involved in the election side of things, mainly as a ballot printer,” Allshouse said. “We work with about 40 counties in Michigan.”
Allshouse said Spectrum Printers also prints poll books and other forms needed on election day but this was the first time they printed voter identification cards.
“With the information the local clerks are able to provide us, and with our digital print equipment, we’re able to take that list of addresses and output it out onto a voter ID card and mail it for them,” Allshouse said.
Dane said they do not have a deadline for mailing the cards but decided not to wait.
“It’s more cost effective to do it now rather than wait because it saves money and time on all the changes we’d be making in the meantime,” Dane said.