The timing of Wisconsin’s state primaries, which took place Tuesday amid the coronavirus pandemic, went beyond the April presidential primary, with few problems reported.
It’s very different from the elections 4 months ago, which saw long queues in some cities and employees hit through the avalanche of mail orders.
While Tuesday’s primaries for state seats in Congress and the legislature were a smart check for secretaries and voters, the number of other people who voted is a fraction of what is expected in November. Since 2000, the number one participation rate in August has ranged from 10% to 25%. Presidential elections over the same time period attracted at least two-thirds of the state’s voters.
“In November, it will be 3 to 4 times larger than what we saw [on Tuesday],” said Claire Woodall-Vogg, executive director of the Milwaukee City Electoral Commission. “[On Tuesday] a smart test, but in fact we’ve learned classes, tactics to make it more effective.”
It turns out that the top electorate voted by mail in the August primary. As of Wednesday morning, 593,774 ballots of the 907,422 requested had been returned, according to the Wisconsin Electoral Commission (WEC). Just over 106,000 absentee votes were returned to the 2018 primary.
It marked the timing of the election across the state with an increase in absentee voting. A record 1,157,599 more people voted for absentees in April and employees struggled to respond to requests. The increase in the number of absenteeism requests, as well as postal service unrest, delays and unrest on the absent website, meant that thousands of others did not get their ballots until after Election Day, if they came here.
Many secretaries told CBS News that they were more satisfied with managing the most programs compared to last August’s primaries, even though this put a lot of strain on secretaries, especially in small municipalities. Woodall-Vogg said there were disruptions in closing some 270 ballots until the end of June, however, the city canceled the ballots and sent replacements. Wisconsin Watch reported that Wauwatosa had ordered 421 ballots until late June that had not been delivered first. Other employees were unaware of widespread unrest with mail-in ballots that were unsuccessful in the electorate until Tuesday.
“We had the luxury of the time we didn’t have in April, when we only had three or four weeks between the time the pandemic was declared and the time the election was held,” said Jim Verbick, Madison’s deputy municipal secretary. “I feel like our workplace has learned a lot, the state has learned a lot, and the electorate has learned a lot.”
In Milwaukee, more than 50,000 absentee votes have been returned for the primary, and Woodall-Vogg expects between 150,000 and 200,000 in November. Many voters cast their votes on Election Day, forcing the election to count ballots until 2:30 a.m. on Wednesday.
Voters seem to be involved with the postal service. About part of the absentee ballots at absentee polling stations at the beginning of the week before the election came here from the voter who cast the votes, who voted at the venue, Woodall-Vogg said.
“Based on what I saw and really saw, what we’ve noticed in the last two weeks is that the electorate doesn’t need to put their ballots in the hands of the post office,” Woodall-Vogg said. He plans to load more deposit boxes in November and has expanded early voting functions to meet that.
“I’m more confident than Monday, say, that things will be less difficult (in November),” said Shauntay Nelson, state director of All Voting is Local in Wisconsin. “I’m also cautious because there will be so many other things at stake in November.”
The weather, the time when other people are alerted to adjustments to polling stations and whether there will be enough staff to keep polling stations open throughout voting day.
What is still transparent is how many ballots will be rejected, either because they arrived after 8 p.m. Central time deadline on Election Day or for other reasons. A CBS News state-knowledge investigation found that 1.9% of returned absentee ballots were rejected in April.
The enduring photographs of Wisconsin’s April election were the long queues at polling stations in Milwaukee and Green Bay, when cities can only open some sites due to the large staff shortage. That’s not the case on Tuesday. Although participation was lower, more polling stations were open and more voters available.
Milwaukee opened 168 sites on Tuesday, up from just five in April, Woodall-Vogg said. The city has recruited more than six hundred new election officials to make up almost one of the 1,400 election workers. In November, Woodall-Vogg needs 2,400 polling stations to cover the 180 polling stations that are open in Milwaukee.
“I don’t think our in-person vote at the polls went better,” Woodall-Vogg said. “Our election officials felt safe, our constituents felt safe.”
Madison opened 89 polling stations on Tuesday, up from April. Green Bay, which opened two sites in April, had 17 polling stations on Tuesday.
Still, finding enough election officials has been a struggle for many local secretaries, said Diane Coenen, president of the Wisconsin Association of Municipal Secretaries and Municipal Secretary of Oconomowoc. A week before the election, there was a shortage of more than 900 election officials in the state, and Gov. Tony Evers had to mobilize the National Guard to fill the void.
In Kenosha, some Members of the National Guard were reassigned from a counting center to a polling station where some staff members did not show up, but opened in time, according to WEC spokesman Reid Magney.
Polling stations won PPE and health equipment, and the electorate told CBS News that it felt inside. Voters were begged to wear masks, but were not required to wear them. Magney claimed that there were very few disorders caused by the fact that the electorate was not dressed in masks, but that there were reports that election officials were not dressed in them, even if necessary.
Although most people have to vote by mail, some have gone to the polls because it is a component of their regime and they like to see their ballot go through a machine.
“I feel a lot more about approving my vote and watching him count,” said Kathryn Paulsen, who voted in Waukesha on Tuesday.
While there were no widespread reports that mail surveys were successful at the electorate in time, Camille Mays said she went to vote at the Washington High School of Information Technology in Milwaukee on Tuesday morning because her mail poll never arrived. She said she had asked for one for the year in the spring and that she planned to go to vote by mail in November, although she was “very angry” because her poll didn’t come in August.
“I’m going to ask for a vote by mail, but I’m going to vote anyway,” Mays said. “Nothing will stop me from voting.”