Live election updates from Port Huron

The county election director does not expect any results before 11 p.m

Voters in St. Clair brought their values and voices to the voting booths today as they cast their ballots for everything from city councils to President of the United States.

“So far, things are going well from what we’ve heard from our clerks,” Cara DenUyl, elections manager for the St. Louis County Clerk’s Office, said Tuesday. Clair.

DenUyl said election results would not be available until at least 11 p.m. Tuesday, with some needed until the morning. She said more candidates have run write-in campaigns and write-in votes are taking longer.

Polls close at 8:00 p.m

Voters support a variety of candidates

As voters cast their ballots, candidates and their friends sat near polling station entrances with signs supporting their chosen campaign, careful to observe the legal requirement not to campaign.

Voters and campaigners alike told the Times Heralds they see voting as both a civic duty and a privilege, despite the stress and division that comes with politics.

Marcus Middleton, a Port Huron resident, remembers when he served during the Vietnam War and the soldiers advocated lowering the minimum voting age. If young people could be sent to fight and die overseas, it was argued, shouldn’t they have a say in who makes those decisions?

“I felt proud,” Middleton said of his first vote. “I’m finally going to choose someone who makes decisions rather than letting someone else choose for me.”

On Tuesday, Middleton appeared outside Colonial Woods Missionary Church wearing campaign memorabilia for John Middleton, his son who is running for Port Huron City Council.

Across the parking lot, Ben Ries was also supporting a candidate he believed in, Joseph Pavlov, who is running for the 64th state district in the Michigan House of Representatives. Ries said he had known Pavlov through church most of his life, and as a lifelong Republican, voting for a family friend was an easy choice.

However, sitting next to Ries in the parking lot was someone with very different views. Vicki Blackburn brought her own sign reading “Dictatorship or Democracy”, a warning, she said, against the authoritarian government she feared former US President Donald Trump would build if he won a second term in office .

“I have very strong feelings about Donald Trump,” Blackburn said. – An insurrection has already started.

Ries and Blackburn inevitably found themselves talking and debating. The two were not found to agree on policy, but both agreed that it was important to have a civil debate.

“I think what’s important to me is the core of my values as a Christian is for a person as Christ sees them,” Ries said. “I may disagree with someone, but they are human and they have value.”