MADISON, Wis.— The state’s top elections official is urging one million Wisconsinites who got absentee ballots in the mail to return them as soon as possible.
About 1.1 million people got their absentee ballots in the last week to ten days, after clerks were required by state law to start mailing ballots on September 17.
That number, 1.1 million, makes up a big chunk of people voting in the presidential election.
“That represents almost a third of turnouts that we typically see in an election like the one coming up in November,” said Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe.
Wolfe said the sooner you can send your absentee ballot back, the better. Wisconsin state law says absentee ballots must be received by the clerk by 8 p.m. on election day. There’s currently a court ruling that could allow for ballots to come in for the following week after the election, but that case is still in progress. For now, that ruling is stayed until at least September 28.
No matter what the courts decide, your ballot will be safe if it’s in the hands of your local election official by 8 p.m. on election day. Wolfe said you should do your best to make sure it gets there in time.
“Plan for the fact that that journey could take up to a week each way,” she said.
Chances are, you may be able to track your ballot from the time it leaves the clerk’s office to come to you, to the time it’s back in the hands of your clerk.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission approved adding barcodes to absentee ballot envelopes, so they’ll be scanned every step of the way. To be clear, not every clerk’s office has chosen to use them, but Wolfe expects many will.
“In most communities, the clerks will track that information in real-time,” Wolfe said. “The clerks are actually required to mark when the absentee ballot is received, when they have it in hand, they're going to mark that and you're going to see whether or not they've actually received that.”
The clerks will also be able to mark if there are any issues with your ballot.
“Let's say a voter sends back their ballot, but they forgot to have their witness sign it,” Wolfe said. “The clerk can let them know about that and we can display that on My Vote as well for the voter to see that there's a problem and that they need to contact their local clerks to learn what they need to do in order to fix that problem.”
If you’re worried about your absentee ballot in the mail, you have a few options to cast your absentee ballot that don’t involve returning it by USPS.
You can vote early in-person during the two weeks before the election, which uses an absentee ballot. You can also see if your municipality has a ballot dropbox. Or, you can bring your ballot straight to your local election official’s office.
Now, clerks are preparing to count all those absentee votes. It can be a tedious process: Clerks log and verify that all the correct information is on the absentee ballot envelope, then on election day, those ballots have to be sent to your regular polling place.
Once there, your absentee ballot is treated as if you were there in-person. Essentially, a poll worker is standing in for you. They’ll get a voter number for you, put your address in the poll book, record your voter number, and open your envelope and put your ballot into the counting machine.
“That means each absentee ballot has to be assigned a voter number, the name and address of the voter has to be stated just like if you were there signing the poll book,” said Wolfe.
By state law, clerks can’t start counting absentee ballots until 7 a.m. on election day. It’s a lot of work to get all those absentee ballots processed and counted.
“You need even more poll workers than you have in the past, and the more poll workers we have … the more quickly that the poll workers in the polling places will be able to get those unofficial results on election night,” Wolfe said.
To get election information, track your ballot, or learn about becoming a poll worker, click here to go to My Vote Wisconsin.