Nearly 408K absentee ballots cast ahead of election with Wisconsin Supreme Court race

Nearly 408,000 people have already cast their ballots ahead of next week’s election, which includes the high-profile Wisconsin Supreme Court race. The number of people choosing early, in-person voting is nearly double what it was during the state’s last Supreme Court race — with Waukesha County currently leading Milwaukee and Dane counties in early votes.

As of Tuesday, clerks across Wisconsin had received about 140,000 more absentee ballots than they did ahead of the 2023 state Supreme Court election, according to data from the state’s elections commission. That works out to an increase of more than 52 percent year to year.

Notably, the number of people casting early, in-person absentee ballots has jumped by nearly 95 percent. The most recent data shows 200,202 people have voted early this year, compared to 102,894 at the same point two years ago.

The numbers show more people, particularly those in Republican-leaning counties, have been banking their votes ahead of election day. In-person, early voting continues through Sunday, and absentee ballots sent by mail will be counted through election day.

Waukesha County leads Wisconsin in early vote

So far, Waukesha County, which is home to conservative Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel, leads the state in early, in-person votes with 32,330 tallied as of Tuesday. That marks a nearly 95 percent increase over the 16,592 who did at the same time in 2023. Waukesha’s early vote total works out to just more than 16 percent of early ballots tallied across Wisconsin so far.

City of Waukesha interim-clerk Linda Gourdoux told WPR her office has been “outrageously busy” compared to the February primary election. She said her office has been getting about 100 to 125 requests for mailed absentee ballots each day, though that’s dropped off some with election day around the corner. Gourdoux said about 77 percent of all absentee ballots requested so far have been returned.

“It makes you feel justified as the clerk’s office because absentee ballots are extremely time consuming to get out,” Gourdoux said. “There’s a lot of hand work involved to get one mail ballot out the door. So, the fact that they’re coming back in a really quick, efficient manner makes you feel better about all the time and energy that goes into getting them out the door.” 

Milwaukee County was close behind with 32,149 early, in-person ballots as of Tuesday, which represented an increase of about 82 percent over numbers from two years ago. About 16 percent of all early votes in Wisconsin have come from Milwaukee County.

Dane County, which is home to liberal Supreme Court candidate Susan Crawford, is reporting 31,465 early votes, which marks an 85 percent increase over the 17,016 early, in-person ballots collected at the same point in 2023. Dane County’s numbers also represented about 16 percent of all early votes cast in Wisconsin one week out from the April 1 election.

Historically, Democrats have embraced early voting more than Republicans, and President Donald Trump has previously called for restricting it. On Tuesday, Trump signed an executive order seeking to change how states carry out elections. In a statement, he said he’d ideally like to “go to paper ballots, same day voting” in order to “secure our elections.” After his 2020 loss to former President Joe Biden, Trump falsely blamed widespread voter fraud.

Still, the GOP has come around on early voting. Ahead of the presidential election in November, Republican Party of Wisconsin Chair Brian Schimming said they were one of the first state parties to call for embracing early voting options. The Republican National Committee also pushed supporters to bank their ballots ahead of Trump’s reelection in order to “swamp the vote.”