Nearly 200K absentee ballots returned with just more than 2 weeks before presidential election

More than 199,000 absentee ballots for the upcoming presidential election have been returned to clerks around Wisconsin. While that represents a drop in the bucket compared with 2020 return rates, it’s higher than the total number of by-mail absentee ballots returned during the 2016 presidential contest.

As of Thursday, the Wisconsin Elections Commission reported 515,514 absentee ballots have been mailed to voters in all of the state’s 72 counties. So far, 199,206 — or nearly 36 percent — have been returned. 

Dane County has seen 28,359 absentee ballots come back to clerks’ offices. Milwaukee County is a close second with nearly 28,182 ballots returned and Waukesha County has recorded nearly 17,867 absentee ballots turned in.

Amid the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, use of absentee ballots by voters exploded in Wisconsin. Elections commission data show that on Oct. 10, 2020 nearly 676,000 absentee ballots had been received by clerks, which works out to a return rate of more than 51 percent.

Still, this year’s running total shows by-mail absentee ballots exceed the total returned throughout the 2016 presidential election. That year, 163,917 ballots were returned, according to data from the election’s commission predecessor, the former Government Accountability Board.

Waukesha County Clerk Meg Wartman told WPR her staff has been busy mailing absentee ballots to voters who’ve requested them, while preparing for the start of in-person, absentee voting, which starts on Oct. 22 in most communities. 

Wartman said before the pandemic, the average return-rate for absentee ballots in Waukesha County was around 20 percent.

“And then, it jumped up to about 70 percent, at least in Waukesha County during COVID,” Wartman said. “And since then, it’s come back down between that 25 or 35 percent.”

Wartman said everything is running smoothly in her county, but she’s encouraging residents to complete their voter registration ahead of the Nov. 5 election so they can avoid long lines at their polling places.