Kathleen Gray, and Todd Spangler

Detroit Free Press

The more than 2.5 million voters who cast a ballot in Michigan's presidential primary Tuesday set a new state record — shattering the old mark of 1.9 million people who voted in 1972.

Turnout was so high Tuesday that some clerks said some precincts ran out of ballots. The high number was fueled by a huge increase in absentee voting.

Clerks ran out of ballots in Redford Township, Ingham County and in one precinct in Kent County. Additional ballots were quickly sent to those precincts, but some voters reported having to wait in line for more than an hour until more ballots were delivered.

Turnout was so high at a Redford Township polling station, Precinct 25, that the station ran out of Democratic ballots for at least half an hour, an organizer said.

Precinct 25 Chairman Jack Zatirka said that as of close to the normal 8 p.m. closing time, 609 people had voted — roughly consistent with that of a general election turnout. Yet more than 100 were still standing in a line that extended several yards out the door of Vandenburg Elementary School. A few who were almost at the front told the Free Press they had been waiting about an hour and a half.

He added that since everyone who got in line by 8 p.m. needed to be served, “Who knows when we’re going to get done voting.”

Wanda Frost, who lives in the Redford Township area and was waiting near the front of the line at 8 p.m., said she had been coming to the polling station for close to two decades and couldn’t remember having to wait that long.

Two other precincts — 17 and 21 — had requested more ballots, but never actually ran out so much as they ran low, said Jina Sawani, a spokeswoman for the Wayne County Clerk.

“In this record turnout, these kind of things happen,” Sawani said in an e-mail.

In Ingham County, municipal clerks were photocopying ballot forms to cope with a shortage caused by an unexpectedly large turnout, Clerk Barb Byrum said Tuesday evening.

Everyone in line to vote by 8 p.m. was able to cast a ballot, Byrum said. The photocopied forms would have to be tabulated by hand, she said.

As of earlier Tuesday, nearly 556,000 absentee ballots had been issued: 311,407 Republican ballots and 239,197 Democratic ones. In total, it was 162,000 more than those issued four years ago. In an EPIC/MRA poll done last week for the Detroit Free Press and other media partners, people surveyed who had already voted by absentee leaned heavily toward New York businessman Donald Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Voting on Election Day was also way up, according to some local clerks and the Secretary of State's Office.

"We're seeing high turnout in pockets around the state on both sides of the aisle," said Christopher Thomas, head of elections for the Michigan SOS. There were predictions before the polls opened that up to 2 million voters could show up. But that number was quickly surpassed, and the 2.5 million voters became the largest for a presidential primary in state history.

Slightly fewer —1.9 million people or 47% of the registered voters — cast ballots in the 1972 election, according to Secretary of State Ruth Johnson. Turnout in presidential primaries typically is much lower. In 2012, only 16.7% of the registered voters cast ballots.

Staff writer Daniel Bethencourt and the Lansing State Journal contributed to this report.

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