Inside Wisconsin’s Election Mess: 1000’s of Lacking or Nullified Ballots

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Inside Wisconsin’s Election Mess: 1000’s of Lacking or Nullified Ballots

Tamera Goodwin and her husband, who reside in Madison, additionally mentioned they hadn’t acquired ballots. “I used to be wanting all over, I used


Tamera Goodwin and her husband, who reside in Madison, additionally mentioned they hadn’t acquired ballots. “I used to be wanting all over, I used to be wanting on the information, Fb, my state assemblyman’s web page, speaking to neighbors at a distance, however everybody was confused,” Ms. Goodwin mentioned. “None of us has gotten our ballots and none of us had readability of the place to go.”

Missing different choices, Ms. Goodwin and her husband went to vote in individual on Tuesday.

In Racine, about 40 minutes south of Milwaukee, Daybreak and Jeff Loken, additionally retired, complained that they didn’t obtain their ballots. The 2 Democrats lastly trudged to the polls Tuesday night time, to not be deterred by what Mr. Loken, who describes himself as a “die-hard Democrat” considered as an intentional effort by Republicans to suppress his vote. (State Republican lawmakers rebuffed the Democratic governor’s request to postpone the election.)

Some absentee voters who acquired their ballots and mailed them again in time are working right into a separate concern: postmarking.

After a lot authorized wrangling over this 12 months’s absentee poll deadlines, the Supreme Court docket’s resolution held that ballots have to be postmarked by Election Day to rely. However in at the very least one metropolis, Madison, numerous ballots acquired by the clerk had been by no means even postmarked to start with.

“We’re nonetheless receiving mail now from the publish workplace, and about half of it’s postmarked,” mentioned Maribeth Witzel-Behl, the town clerk. “It’s most likely by now a pair thousand that we’ve acquired from the publish workplace with no postmark.”

She mentioned her workplace is relationship the ballots with its personal stamp as quickly as they arrive, and is working with the town legal professional to find out what to do with them.

Even when postmarks are utilized, they will show problematic, notably for some rural voters. Michelle Schwenneker, who lives in rural Jackson County, mentioned that the mail truck in her city comes as soon as a day, at 7:30 a.m., so if she put her poll within the mailbox on Election Day it wouldn’t be postmarked in time.



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