Here & Now

Wisconsin Clerk Asks Absentee Voters to Hand-Deliver Ballots

Frederica Freyberg:
Election clerks across the state are at their busiest, preparing for November 3. In-person absentee voting that begins Tuesday is expected to see a high turnout as confidence among voters and election officials in the Postal Service to deliver mail in ballots on time is at a low.

Scott McDonell:
The trend of fewer absentee ballots is true across the whole county, not just Madison. And we are getting an influx of phone calls. We’re asking about in-person absentee hours. So I think we’ll see — this has been a trend in the last few years where the trends of Madison are pretty much mirrored across the whole county. So we’ll see an increase in in-person absentee voting across the county starting next week. I want to point out, though, that each community has its own hours. Some have drop boxes, some do not. I think one of the problem with this general messaging is people get confused because each community is different. So really you need to check, you know, “my vote” to see the status. You can call your clerk’s office to find out when they’re there if you want to hand deliver a ballot or do in-person absentee hours leading up to the election. Voters should get their ballot in two weeks out. And I agree that while that’s a long time, we were seeing ballots show up with postmarks longer than that. So I think once you get inside that two weeks, if you can hand deliver it to a drop box or to a clerk’s office, that would be our recommendation.