After three months of preparing, getting materials to the desired locations and putting a vat of elbow grease into setup, government officials are ready for voting day.

The chairman or chairwoman of the precinct and an army of workers arrived at 6 a.m. today to unpack several tabulators and the AutoMARK machines, tape down cables and set up booths, said Mary Lou Foster, chairwoman of St. Paul Lutheran Church precinct.

“I usually work people in pairs because some of this stuff is usually clumsy,” Foster said. “We have some people outside measuring the 100-foot line, because there can’t be any campaigning beyond that, and we have all kinds of signs we need to put up.”

Each precinct requires the same effort to make the building voter-friendly, but the workload varies slightly depending on size, said Sally Burroughs, chairperson of Brody Hall precinct.

The months of planning and the crack-of-dawn setup are tasks that need to occur to make voting fair and accurate, said Sharon Reid, East Lansing’s city clerk.

“It just is an involved process — it’s like making a car,” she said. “There are steps that have to go into it, and there’s no shortcut to making it.”

Electronic voting could be an aspect of the future, but the current ballot system is pretty efficient, Reid said.

As far as efficiency goes, Foster is glad Michigan decided to rid itself of pesky punch cards.

“The only clumsy part is the size of the ballot itself and placing it into the tabulator,” Foster said. “Compared to punch cards, this is phenomenal.”

The strain that goes into assembling voting accessories is an afterthought for most citizens, but the crew behind the process mainly aims for an organized operation.

“We get the crew there and we just hope we have a good turnout. It makes the day go much smoother,” Burroughs said. “We just want to be ready to serve the voters when they get there and get them through as quickly as possible.”