‘Voter rescue’: Help in Milwaukee for hundreds who show up at wrong place

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On the first day of early in-person voting in Wisconsin, a line 100 people long stretched outside the former Milwaukee Western Bank at 60th and Capitol. 

Throughout the warm late afternoon, the line seemed to only grow, inspiring a local barber to hand out his business cards. 

Some people arrived at the North Side early voting site and quickly decided to return another day. But others, including a couple who brought lawn chairs, dutifully took their places in the queue. 

Voters exiting who said they spent an hour and a half or more in line, partly because of computer problems, didn’t discourage Renee Green, 56.

“Got to get out and make sure my vote is counted,” said Green, who came with a woman who walked with a cane. “We said, ‘We’re going to get this done.’”

Linea Sundstrom, a semi-retired archaeologist, also arrived at the site, which is advertised on temporary street signs more than a mile away. 

But her work — dubbed “voter rescue” — won’t begin until after the voting machines are gone.

Sundstrom co-leads Supermarket Legends, a nonpartisan, left-leaning Milwaukee voter advocacy group that has registered voters outside grocery stores and other venues since 2011. 

For the “voter rescue” initiative, volunteers spend each Election Day at some of the city’s 10 early voting sites, greeting hundreds of bewildered residents who mistakenly thought they could cast Election Day ballots at early voting locations such as the old bank.

The volunteers explain that the nearly two-week early voting period ends the weekend before Election Day. They try to make sure the voters know how to find their local polling place — which is the only place where in-person voting on Election Day is allowed.

“We do a lot of different things around promoting voting in Milwaukee. This is one that everybody likes to do,” Sundstrom said. “Because you get that instant feedback — this person was upset and discouraged, but now they have a plan. Maybe they’ll vote, maybe they won’t; we can’t control that. But at least they’ve empowered themselves to vote if they want to, and they didn’t just get the door slammed in their face.”

Hundreds of voters ‘rescued’

By now, “battleground state” is almost as synonymous with Wisconsin as “Badger State” when it comes to presidential elections. The candidate who carried Wisconsin in four of the last six contests — including Republican Donald Trump in 2016 and Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 — won the state by less than 1 percentage point.

So, the adage that every vote counts packs more power here, and in-person early voting has become more important.

In the 2020 presidential election, 20 percent of Wisconsin ballots were cast at early voting sites. It was 12 percent in the November 2022 election, which featured races for governor and U.S. Senate. 

Sundstrom said that based on simple tallies kept on paper, Supermarket Legends “rescued” 800 Election Day voters in 2020 and nearly 900 in 2022.

Leaders of the National Association of State Election Directors, the national Electionline news service and the Wisconsin League of Women Voters said they were not aware of voter rescue efforts anywhere else in the U.S.

“This is a really interesting phenomenon,” said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, adding that he had not heard of such initiatives elsewhere. He noted similar confusion among students at UW-Madison, where the early voting site is not always the same as the Election Day polling place.

Orlando Owens, a Milwaukee County Republican Party branch chair who works to increase GOP voter turnout in Milwaukee, called voter rescue “another tool in the toolbox” of increasing voter turnout in heavily Democratic Milwaukee.

“We have to find a way to match it,” he said.

‘They had a plan, and then the plan falls apart’

During early voting, Milwaukee voters can cast ballots at any early voting site in the city, which is part of what leads to confusion.

On Election Day, a voter can vote at an early voting site — but only if it is also a polling place that serves that voter’s address. 

Early voting sites such as the old bank, which isn’t a polling place, aren’t open for Election Day voting.

“Sometimes people are a little rattled or agitated because they had a plan, and then the plan falls apart,” Sundstrom said. “So, the first thing is just to try and get the person to take a breath and figure out what the problem is.”

Most voters, when told they have to vote at their polling place, know where to go, but if they don’t, volunteers look up the location for them.

There’s no way to know whether people went to their polling place and voted.

“For most people, they’re like, ‘Oh, well, I can do that.’ But there are people who are working two or three jobs across town — there’s no way they’re going to be able to get there,” Sundstrom said. “If they say they can’t do it, we try and strategize … but we don’t have any superpowers. We just try and provide them the information and a friendly face.”

Avoiding the anxiety

More than 97,000 people in Wisconsin cast ballots on the first day of early in-person voting, 22 percent more than in the November 2020 election.

That doesn’t eliminate chances of confusion at early voting sites on Election Day for a presidential contest that is effectively tied in Wisconsin, according to the latest polls, and with voter turnout expected to be high.

Kisha Fields, 47, came to 60th and Capitol on Tuesday to vote early for the first time, saying she wanted to avoid Election Day anxiety. 

Fields was undaunted by the wait and hopeful that all ballots, no matter how they’re cast, would be accurately counted.

“Prayer is the key,” she said. “I don’t have no control over it; none of us do … I’ve just got to do my part.”