Michigan
1.2M cast early, in-person ballots in Michigan ahead of Election Day
Lansing — About 1.2 million people voted at early, in-person voting sites across Michigan in the first presidential election where the state constitution allowed for the voting option.
The number of Michigan voters — updated by the Secretary of State’s office early Monday morning after the conclusion of early, in-person voting — represent more than one-fifth of the total who cast ballots in the 2020 presidential election. When the 1.98 million absentee ballots received as of Sunday night are added, the total number of early voters moves to about 3.2 million, or nearly 44% of active registered voters in Michigan.
The total number of early voters so far is on par with 2020, when roughly 3.2 million people voted absentee ballots during the pandemic. A total of nearly 5.6 million voted in that presidential election.
A constitutional amendment passed by voters in 2022 requires all clerks to offer at least nine days of early, in-person voting ahead of Election Day, a mandate that resulted in the majority of communities offering early voting from Saturday, Oct. 26 through Sunday. Three communities opted to open voting centers earlier: Detroit, Canton Township and East Lansing.
Some of the highest numbers of early, in-person voters turned out in Detroit, with a final tally of 42,902 people voting sites in the state’s largest city. Additionally, Detroit has received back about 89,000 of roughly 109,000 absentee ballots sent, according to the Secretary of State’s office.
“We knew they would be eager for it,” Detroit Clerk Janice Winfrey said Sunday of early, in-person voting. “This is our first year doing it in Detroit. It started out slow — you know, the presidential primary, was slow — but I am so pleased with turnout.”
Winfrey said lines for early voting topped out at about an hour and 10 minutes, but voters weren’t deterred by the wait.
“It’s impressive to see,” Winfrey said. “Everybody’s energy is high. Nobody’s mad about being in line. And that’s the part that I’m thankful for.”
Rural turnout
Chris Ferguson was among the more than 1.2 million who cast a ballot in-person at an early voting site in Shiawassee County. The 59-year-old Owosso teacher stopped at Owosso City Hall on Sunday to cast a ballot while running errands.
Ferguson said she likely could have made time Tuesday to cast her ballot but decided to stop by on a day when she had less on her plate.
“Everybody that I know has voted early,” Ferguson said. “They just thought it was so nice, no pressure, convenient. I’m on my way to the grocery store and then I’m going to go home and rake leaves.”
Owosso City Clerk Amy Kirkland said Sunday afternoon that her office saw a marked uptick in early, in-person voters compared to the August primary.
“Our traffic has really picked up,” Kirkland said. “In August, we had 100 voters over nine days. The last time I checked downstairs, we had over 1,300 for this election. Early voting seems to have really caught on.”
The mid-Michigan city, which has about 12,200 registered voters, also issued about 2,500 absentee ballots, Kirkland said. She expects the use of early, in-person options to increase as more people learn of the option.
“I actually like early voting and, if it continues to grow the way I think it will, we may actually be able to cut down on our costs on Election Day,” Kirkland said.
In the northeast Lower Peninsula, Alpena Township Clerk Michele Palevich said Sunday that roughly 2,000 people have circulated through an early voting site the township is operating with the city of Alpena.
She was pleased with the early, in-person turnout, which was much steadier than the trickle the township saw in August. On one of the nine days of early voting in August, a total of six people visited the early voting site, she said.
“This is the first election where I’ve really seen the benefit of it, where we’re getting a good turnout,” Palevich said. “When we’re getting a good turnout, it feels beneficial. But when we’re getting days with just six voters, it doesn’t feel that beneficial.”
In southern Livingston County, Kristina Behm made good time Saturday getting through the line at her Putnam Township early voting center.
“It’s kind of nice to just get it done over the weekend and then you don’t have to go before work or after work or whatever,” said Behm, 31. “It’s great for people who have lives and things happen.”
Urban and suburban use
At Lansing’s Reo Road voting center Saturday afternoon, voters waited about 20 minutes to fill out their ballots — part of a steady stream of voters the city has seen over the nine days of early voting, City Clerk Chris Swope said. The capital city also had a second early voting site at Foster Community Center.
The city was one of several pilot communities to roll out early, in-person voting sooner than the rest of the state. Lansing offered some period of early voting ahead of its November 2023 election, the presidential primary in February, a city election in May and the August primary.
Early, in-person voting numbers were much smaller in those earlier elections, which typically have lower turnout than a presidential election, Swope said.
“It was really great to see it catch on and see voters coming out,” Swope said. “And it’s really just people coming all day long.”
In Kent County, each jurisdiction ran its own early voting centers, with Grand Rapids hosting four within the city alone, said Kent County Clerk Lisa Posthumus Lyons. Countywide, about 96,265 early, in-person votes were cast within Kent County, she said.
Lyons said she was relieved to see the early, in-person voting centers used after attendance was underwhelming in the February presidential primary and August primary. Participation in the county’s first day of early voting on Oct. 26 was double the February and August early, in-person voting tallies together, she said.
“I think early voting in Michigan has proven to work and proven to be secure,” Lyons said Sunday. “And the voters have proven that they are interested in it.”
Lyons said Kent County’s absentee numbers are down from 2020, but it’s hard to tell just yet if that’s an effect of the pandemic or voters shifting from absentee to early, in-person. Until a better trend is established, it’s difficult anticipate how each voting option will be utilized, she said.
“Things went smoothly, but we had lines,” Lyons said. “Not knowing where the baseline would be with this being our first large turnout election with early voting, we didn’t know what to expect.”
West Michigan wasn’t the only region experiencing lines at it’s early, in-person voting centers.
In DeWitt, 23-year-old Brayden Shaw walked into the city’s early voting site around noon only to walk back out again after seeing the line. Voters leaving the voting site said they had waited about an hour and 10 minutes in line.
Shaw said he planned to return later in the day or early Tuesday to cast his ballot. He said, next time, he may find a weekday to vote.
“I think it’s smart to cut down on lines on Election Day,” Shaw said. “But I think everyone has the same mindset to try and vote early because they think it’s going to be shorter lines. And then that just causes a backup.”
eleblanc@detroitnews.com
Dearborn Divine Child’s Marcello Vitti on 10-6 win over Harper Woods
Dearborn Divine Child executed a perfect gameplan and played stellar defense to upset Harper Woods 10-6 in MHSAA D-4 regional finals, Nov. 15, 2025.
After a 10-6 win over Harper Woods in the Division 4 regional finals, Dearborn Divine Child coach Chris Laney delivered an impassioned speech.
He told his players how proud he was of every single player on the roster, how the only belief the team needed was inside the locker room and how the road continues into the state semifinals against an undefeated Goodrich team defending its state title.
At the end of the speech in the south end zone at Westland John Glenn High School, with a crowd of family and fans sitting behind him, Laney finished his message with the three most popular words of the 2025 Michigan high school football season.
“We not done,” Laney said, leading to his players mobbing him in celebration.
Divine Child players were singing “We Not Done” over and over after pulling off the upset of the playoffs. The phrase comes courtesy of Detroit rapper 42 Dugg, who released a hit song called “We Not Done” in May.
John Glenn officials in the press box played the song during the halftime break, causing both sidelines to erupt with energy as Dugg’s signature whistle and the one-of-a-kind voice started bumping through the school’s speaker system.
The night before, Detroit Cass Tech students who bused down I-94 to watch the Technicians beat Saline 42-28 in the Division 1 regional finals chanted “We Not Done” throughout the win as senior C.J. Sadler dazzled with a four-touchdown, two-interception performance.
“Our student section, our student body around Cass is, it’s just we’re not done,” senior linebacker/nickelback Marcus Jennings said Friday. “We’ve got to finish what we started.”
The song has become the anthem of the 2025 football season in metro Detroit for players and students. The song’s title and oft-repeated hook share the same message as what coaches and players preach throughout the summer and fall as they vie for a run in the single-elimination playoffs to reach the state title game at Ford Field.
In the playoffs, players and coaches are fighting against elimination in a 48-minute battle on the gridiron. The victorious team celebrates gets to spend one more week preparing for another battle with its brothers, lining up with the message of “We Not Done” that 42 Dugg says 22 times in the 2-minute, 55-second song.
In the Division 2 district finals between Orchard Lake St. Mary’s and Birmingham Brother Rice, the suit-and-tie-wearing Brother Rice student section chanted “We Not Done” throughout the first half of the Catholic League rematch.
By the end of the game, which St. Mary’s won 35-14, the Brother Rice students dispersed and it was St. Mary’s assistant coaches singing the song’s hook to themselves and laughing after dealing out a dose of revenge against their rivals.
For Cass Tech, it has been a subtle reminder from the players, starting in the summer during seven-on-seven competitions all the way up to the state semifinals. The Technicians are the defending Division 1 champions and on a 22-game winning streak, but have loftier goals they are still fighting for.
So if you were wondering where one of the main messages from the 2025 Michigan high school football season originated, it started with one of Detroit’s own.
Nominate a high school athlete for the Detroit Free Press boys and girls athlete of the week.
Jared Ramsey covers high school sports for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at jramsey@freepress.com; Follow Jared on X or Bluesky.
Kim Barnes Arico had plenty of questions about her still-very-young Michigan women’s basketball team heading into last Saturday’s game against then-No 18 Notre Dame, and the Wolverines answered every last one of them.
Michigan was more than ready for Notre Dame, walloping the Fighting Irish, 93-54, at Wayne State Fieldhouse in Detroit, for arguably the signature regular-season victory of Barnes Arico’s 14-year tenure in Ann Arbor.
Now it’s on to the next test ― and, well, this one makes Notre Dame look like a pop quiz.
No. 6 Michigan (4-0) plays No. 1 Connecticut (4-0), the defending national champion, in the Basketball Hall of Fame Women’s Showcase at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut at 8 Friday night. The game will air on Fox, the latest taste of national exposure for a Wolverines team whose win over the Fighting Irish was on NBC.
“It’s really exciting. I think it’s a great opportunity for us,” Barnes Arico said earlier this week. “Our kids want to be in this situation and they want to match up against the best.”
This game marks the first meeting between Michigan and Connecticut, the 12-time national champion, in women’s basketball. But it’s not the first meeting between Barnes Arico and Connecticut legendary head coach Geno Auriemma. When she was coaching at St. John’s, her team beat Connecticut on Feb. 18, 2012, to snap the Huskies’ 99-game home winning streak. That was one of just 22 losses for Connecticut in a 13-year span.
This will be the fourth time Michigan ever has played a top-ranked team, and third time in the last two seasons ― after losing to South Carolina and UCLA last regular season. UM also lost to No. 1 Iowa in 1988.
Michigan did beat No. 5 Baylor in the 2021 Hall of Fame Showcase, a win that first helped signal that the program was starting to arrive. A win over Connecticut ― which has four more national championships than the second-best team (Tennessee, with eight; nobody else has more than three) ― would obviously mean even more than that.
“We’ve kind of been working all year for these kinds of games,” sophomore guard Olivia Olson, last season’s co-freshman of the year in the Big Ten, said after the win over Notre Dame, in which she had 20 points.
“We want these games. We want these top matchups.”
Michigan is led by three sophomores, who also led the team last season as freshmen ― Olson (17.8 points per game) and fellow guards Mila Holloway (14.2) and Syla Swords (12.2). But while the Wolverines often played all guards last season, they’ve got more size and inside presence this season, with the additions of forwards Ashley Sofilkanich, a junior transfer from Bucknell, and Te’Yala Delfosse, a freshman. Both also are averaging in double digits scoring.
Michigan is averaging 92.3 points a game, 11th in the nation, fresh off scoring 120 against Binghamton, the second-most points in program history, and most under Barnes Arico.
In Connecticut, Michigan will face a team that has four players on the watch list for the Wooden Award, which goes to the season’s top college basketball player: grad-student Azzi Fudd, senior Serah Williams and sophomores Sarah Strong and Kayleigh Heckel. Michigan has one, Olson.
Connecticut just scored 100 against Ohio State; it also has wins over No. 20 Louisville, Florida State and Loyola-Chicago, the latter which the Huskies held to 31 points.
“Can we handle their pressure?” Barnes Arico said in listing off the keys to the game. “The defensive intensity in the halfcourt is something that I don’t know if our kids have ever faced. I do have a recollection of it. It’s been a minute, but I still can remember how hard it is to even get in your offense because they’re so physical and so aggressive.
“Can we rebound with them? We’re going to have to have this toughness and this grit about us to do that. I know we did against Notre Dame (50-28), but not it’s even going to be dialed up to No. 1.
“I think it will be an unbelievable test for us.”
To be fair, the same might just hold true for Connecticut. Michigan has moved up to No. 6 in the Associated Press poll, its highest ranking since it was No. 6 in February 2022. (Fun fact: With the UM men’s team ranked No. 7, it’s the first week both teams have been in the top 10 at the same time.)
The Huskies have the tradition, with all those national championships, 24 Final Fours and 36 consecutive appearances in the NCAA Tournament.
The Wolverines are building something in their own right, with seven consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances (a program record). They made their first Sweet 16 in 2021, and their first Elite Eight in 2022.
Last season ended up with a second-round loss to Notre Dame, and, well, UM exorcised those demons last weekend.
Now, it’s time for the next test ― and it’s a doozie.
“After seeing what we did today, you know, you want to say, ‘Oh, you know, this is the year,’ but we can’t get comfortable,” Michigan’s Alyssa Crockett, a senior forward, said after the win over Notre Dame. “We know what we want. We’re going to go get it.”
Michigan is one of seven Big Ten teams in the top 25, along with UCLA (3), Maryland (9), Southern Cal (11), Iowa (19), Michigan State (22) and Washington (25).
The Wolverines stay in Connecticut to play Syracuse (4-0) on Sunday (noon; FS1).
They then play next Wednesday against Detroit Mercy at Calihan Hall, the site of Michigan’s WNIT championship win in 2017 ― a major turning point in the program, which hasn’t missed the NCAA Tournament since then. The Wolverines have come so far. Just how far, we might be about to find out.
“They’re really good,” Barnes Arico said of UConn, a little over a year after Michigan narrowly lost to then-No. 1 and defending national champion South Carolina, 68-62. “They will test us in every space, and this early in the season, I think it’s good for us to be tested in that way and for us to see where we need to grow and improve.”
No. 6 Michigan vs. No. 1 Connecticut
➤ Tip-off: 8 Friday, Mohegan Sun Arena, Uncasville, Conn.
➤ TV: Fox
➤ Records: Michigan 4-0; Connecticut 4-0
➤ Series: First meeting
tpaul@detroitnews.com
@tonypaul1984
Michigan
Central Michigan vs. Kent State prediction: Odds, picks, and best bet for Wednesday night ‘MACtion’
Two MAC teams at the end of encouraging seasons will meet on Wednesday night.
Central Michigan can keep its faint hopes of making it to the MAC Championship Game alive with a win over Kent State, but the Golden Flashes also have plenty to play for on Wednesday.
Kent State was left for dead before the season started, but it can still get to a bowl game with wins against Central Michigan and Northern Illinois to close out the campaign.
The Golden Flashes are 9.5-point underdogs in the friendly confines of Dix Stadium in beautiful Kent, Ohio, on Wednesday night.
Central Michigan vs. Kent State odds, prediction
It won’t get much love in the mainstream, but what is happening at Kent State this season is remarkable. Projected to be the worst team in the country after going a combined 1-23 in 2023 and 2024, the Golden Flashes were rocked in April when head coach Kenni Burns was fired with cause for violating his contract.
Mark Carney took over on an interim basis, but it didn’t take long for the school to take away that tag. Carney got the Golden Flashes to believe, winning four of their first 10 games. It may not sound like a big deal, but Kent State’s Over/Under for 2025 was 1.5 wins, so it’s some job that Carney has done with the Flashes.
The numbers are not that impressive, but what the Golden Flashes are doing is just hanging around in games long enough to turn them into coin flips. They were on the right side against Akron, Bowling Green, and Merrimack, and the wrong end against Ball State and Buffalo.
Betting on College Football?
Central Michigan will come into Kent with plenty of betting support. The Chippewas are the better team, they have more on the line, and they are in good form with three wins from their last four games. The problem is that the lopsided action for this game has caused this line to balloon, putting some value on Kent State.
The Golden Flashes should stick around in this one, and it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibilities that Central Michigan falls flat, like it did against Akron not too long ago.
The Play: Kent State +9.5 (-110, DraftKings)
Why Trust New York Post Betting
Michael Leboff is a long-suffering Islanders fan, but a long-profiting sports bettor with 10 years of experience in the gambling industry. He loves using game theory to help punters win bracket pools, find long shots, and learn how to beat the market in mainstream and niche sports.
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