SUN PRAIRIE, Wis. — Early in-person voting in Wisconsin is going smoother after some technical issues were ironed out over the past few days.

What You Need To Know

  • The Wisconsin Elections Commission said high turnout was slowing down the statewide system used to print labels needed for ballots, causing longer wait times to vote

  • That statewide glitch meant voter information had to be handwritten on the ballot and poll workers had to check it for accuracy

  • On Thursday, a steady stream of voters filed in to vote at Sun Prairie’s City Hall. Poll worker Marion Kontek said the delays from earlier in the week were gone most of the day

  • On Nov. 5, clerks in Wisconsin use electronic poll books called Badger Books that don’t connect to the internet or any network outside of a private, secure mobile network at each polling location

The Wisconsin Elections Commission said high turnout was slowing down the statewide system used to print labels needed for ballots, causing longer wait times to vote.

On Thursday, a steady stream of voters filed in to vote at Sun Prairie’s City Hall. Poll worker Marion Kontek said the delays from earlier in the week were no longer an issue for most of Thursday.

“The technical difficulties slowed things down and we ended up having to do quite a bit of work manually, like we did in the bad old days,” Kontek said.

That statewide glitch meant voter information had to be handwritten on the ballot and poll workers had to check it for accuracy.

Sun Prairie City Clerk Elena Hilby said people in her office worked overtime. She had to go back and re-print all the labels and put them on the corresponding envelopes.

“Last night it was back up and running by, I'd say about 5:30,” Hilby said. “So we just stayed until about 7, 7:30, printing off all the labels. So, a little bit more on the back-end side, but we were able to keep up.”

Overall, she said she was happy to see such a high turnout for early voting.

Madison poll worker Kevin Kennedy is also the former director of the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board. He said election leaders plan for everything, but sometimes technology can throw curve balls.

“The system's designed to add more and more servers to help process the load,” Kennedy said. “Obviously, come January, you don't need that, but now you do.”

Kennedy said early in-person voting helps prepare election officials for Nov. 5, as they remain ready to solve any challenges that come up.

“You have to make sure you've got the communication lines with the state IT people and the, everybody's on high alert,” he said. “That's a communication issue and I'm sure they're working on it.”

Hilby said the statewide system that caused issues this week is not used on Election Day. 

On Nov. 5, clerks in Wisconsin use electronic poll books called Badger Books that don’t connect to the internet or any network outside of a private, secure mobile network at each polling location.

 “We’re always ready to figure the problem out,” Hilby said. “So even when our systems went down, everyone had faith in us when we were writing their names on their ballots.”

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