Wisconsin Election Officials Report Strong Voter Turnout

Wisconsin election officials are reporting strong turnout and few problems at polling places across the state on Tuesday.

Government Accountability Board director Kevin Kennedy visited polling places in and around the Madison area on Tuesday morning and said lines were long with eager voters.

“It’s clear that we’ve got an engaged electorate, the polls have shown that throughout,” he said. “The fact that the advertising is staying high. The absentee voting, in fact, is a little bit higher than what we’d expect… not presidential numbers but high. So, that tells us we’re going to have a good, healthy turnout.”

GAB officials predicted that a little more than 56 percent of the voting age public would cast a ballot in Tuesday’s midterm election. Kennedy said that is on par with the turnout during the 2012 recall election.

Clerks in some parts of the state, however, say they’re expecting to beat that number. Superior City Clerk Terri Kalan said they had voters lined up at every precinct before polls opened at 7 a.m. She said based on that and the volume of calls to her office, she expects turnout to be strong.

“Based on past governors’ elections, I think we were looking at about 55 percent. But gosh, as busy as it’s been this morning we might get a little higher,” said Kalan.

In Green Bay, the city clerks’ office said their poll workers were too busy to do any kind of count of voters. In Appleton, turnout was estimated at nearly 30 percent by noon. Officials there expect a total turnout as high as 85 percent of registered voters.

Early voting was also high for this election. In Milwaukee, Election Commission Director Neil Albrecht said they’ve tallied many more absentee ballots than in previous nonpresidential elections.

“We had more early voters — twice as many in fact — than the November 2010 gubernatorial (election). We had a 33 percent increase over the June 2012 recall election,” he said.

Albrecht said they’ve also been too busy to estimate the number of ballots cast on Tuesday, but he said all signs point to a busy election day.

As for problems at the polls, the GAB says everything has been pretty smooth, other than sporadic reports of voting machine break downs and some confusion about whether voters need to show ID.

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