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Nearly 90K absentee ballots still circulating ahead of Tuesday election

More than 719K Wisconsinites have already cast their ballots in midterm

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A person deposits mail in a USPS box
In this Aug. 19, 2020, file photo, a person deposits mail in a box outside United States Post Office in Cranberry Township, Pa. U.S. Postal Service records show delivery delays have persisted across the country as millions of Americans began voting by mail, raising the possibility of ballots being rejected because they arrive too late. Parts of the politically coveted battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio fell short of delivery goals by wide margins as the agency struggles to regain its footing after a tumultuous summer. Gene J. Puskar/AP Photo

More than 89,000 absentee ballots are still circulating in Wisconsin with one day to go before the midterm elections.

As of Monday morning, the Wisconsin Elections Commission reported 808,966 absentee ballots have been sent to voters and 719,429 have been returned. That means 89,537 ballots, or about 11 percent of those sent, have yet to make it to municipal clerks offices around the state. Clerks must receive absentee ballots by 8 p.m. Tuesday.

The WEC report notes 14,978 absentee ballots are still out in Milwaukee County. Waukesha County still has 8,719 ballots circulating and there are 12,357 absentee ballots yet to return to clerks in Dane County.

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A tweet Monday morning from the City of Madison’s clerks office says 59,500 absentee ballots were issued in the runup to Tuesday’s election and 54,684 have been returned. Madison Deputy Clerk Jim Verbick told Wisconsin Public Radio it’s not unusual to have close to 5,000 absentee ballots out the day before an election.

“It is possible they might be in transit through the mail,” said Verbick. “There might be plans of dropping them off today at the clerk’s office. They might be planning to drop them off at the polling place tomorrow.”

Verbick said it’s also possible that voters who requested absentee ballots have decided against voting absentee at all and are planning to vote in person Tuesday.

Interest in voting absentee skyrocketed since the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Verbick said in 2020, his office sent out around 100,000 absentee ballots. Prior to the pandemic, he said absentee ballot requests were in the range of 10,000 to 20,000.

“So, we’re definitely up pre-pandemic, but we’re starting to slide back down from the pandemic numbers as people use either in-person absentee voting or voting at the polling place on Election Day,” Verbick said.

Wisconsin’s absentee ballot rules and guidelines have been the focus of multiple lawsuits this year. On July 8, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that absentee ballot drop boxes are illegal, meaning ballots can only be mailed or dropped off at clerks offices.

On Sept. 7, a Waukesha County Judge ruled that clerks are not allowed to fill in missing information on absentee ballot witness certificates. That struck down guidance issued by the Wisconsin Elections Commission in 2016, which was not challenged in court until after the 2020 election, when former President Donald Trump was attempting to reverse President Joe Biden’s victory in Wisconsin.

Verbick said his office has gotten a lot of questions about how to ensure voters’ absentee ballots aren’t rejected.

“We have voters who want to make sure that they fill out their ballots properly so that they can be counted,” said Verbick. “We’ve also sent, I’d say, a couple hundred back to voters to make sure they corrected missing signatures or their witness addresses.”

Wisconsin Public Radio, © Copyright 2024, Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System and Wisconsin Educational Communications Board.

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