Early voting has started in the 2024 general election. Many people are still deciding how they’re going to vote: whether that’s early in-person, requesting a mail-in ballot or voting on Election Day. To get more information about your options and the protections around them, WUWM spoke with Claire Woodall, a senior advisor at Issue One, a cross-partisan election reform group. She previously was the director of the City of Milwaukee Election Commission.
For a primer on how to vote this year, check here.
What are some of the advantages to voting absentee, either at an early voting location or by mail?
You have certainty that it's taken care of, that you can vote on your own terms. You can study. You have a computer handy, maybe at home where you can look up and make sure you're taking your time to fill out your ballot, so you don't feel like you're rushed.
Early voting allows you not to worry about anything happening just on that singular [Election] Day that would make it so that you can't vote or require you to wait in line to vote or deal with something out of the ordinary. Early voting lasts 13 days. If you travel a lot for work, if you think you could get called away with a day or two days notice, we always recommend that those people vote early just because there's absolutely no early voting on the Monday before the election, which lots of times gets people in a bind.
Any caveats to voting early or by mail?
While people routinely fill out absentee ballots successfully, if you mess up or have a stray mark on your absentee ballot (for example, if you cross someone out and then fill in a different bubble), you have to make sure that you're making it very clear on your absentee ballot what your intention was because [later at the polling place or central count locations, once election workers start feeding the tabulators] the machine's going to spit that out, and then you'll have a team of two bipartisan poll workers reconstructing that ballot to make sure that your vote counts just as you intended.
Also, if you’re returning your absentee ballot by mail, as all the ballots have pre-paid postage, the US Postal Service is advising that you drop it in the mail by Oct. 29.
Why might I want to vote in-person on Election Day?
You can vote in person on Nov. 5 at the polls from 7 a.m. when they open to 8 p.m. when they close. If you do that, your ballot is tabulated immediately, and the ballot isn’t stored anywhere. You are there when your ballot goes through the machine [that counts ballots]. So there are systems in place to [immediately correct your ballot] if you had a stray mark and the machine just can't read it.
[Also] honestly, if you're just turning 18, maybe you're voting for the first time, or maybe you just like that feeling of being within your neighborhood, joining your neighbors, even if it means waiting in a short line to go have that voting experience and feeding your ballot through the machine. That is just as great of a way to vote.
Why is early absentee voting just as safe, secure and reliable as Election Day voting?
Those ballots are all being stored by your clerk or your election commission office in a very secure vault. In the city of Milwaukee, it's under 24-hour video surveillance and then those ballots are going to be counted on Election Day. They are processed by a team of two election workers. Oftentimes at central count in Milwaukee, they will be a bipartisan team, and the machines count your ballot just the same way as if you were at your polling place on Election Day.
Can you get even more detailed about why early or mail-in voting is safe and secure?
Every absentee ballot is tracked in a statewide voter database. You can check to see where your ballot is in the mail if you have concerns. What if someone's requested a ballot on my behalf? I know that's a conspiracy theory we hear a lot. You can go and look it up yourself to make sure that you know no one's requested a ballot on your behalf.
Those ballots are then tracked back as they come in. Every envelope is scanned as being returned, so you can also have peace of mind that your ballot has made it back.
What are some of the ballot security mechanisms in place when you vote early at the polls?
When you go to vote at an in-person early voting location, you're going to get a ballot, vote, put it in that envelope, and seal that envelope right then. So, you can't go get a ballot and then take it home with you.
If you're voting in the city of Milwaukee, you're going to put the ballot into a secure ballot box, which is locked, and at the end of the night, those will all be retrieved.
Election workers will count them, make sure that there are the correct number of ballots for the number of voters, and then they will be transported back and stored securely until Election Day.
The only handling that happens of those ballots is that they get reviewed to make sure they have a voter signature, a witness signature, and a witness address, because clerks want to check and make sure your ballot is ready to be counted on Election Day, and it needs all three of those things.
Let's say I am requesting an absentee ballot to be sent to my home and returning it by mail, via drop box or to my clerk’s office. Why is that safe and secure?
If you are in Milwaukee or a community that is using drop boxes, you can return your ballot via drop box.
The drop boxes are almost always under 24-hour security surveillance. They certainly are in Milwaukee. And then every time those ballots are picked up, the box is examined, photos are taken, the number of ballots are counted. The ballots are placed into a bag and then secured using a tamper proof seal that has a serial number, and then that is all verified by a third party once they get back to the secure absentee location where they will be opened up and then sorted and prepared for Election Day.
So, it's a very secure process. I often say [returning via drop box] is more secure than by the mail, but the mail is certainly convenient, especially if you're not local. And then you can also always return your own ballot in person to your clerk's office or the city hall election commission office up through Election Day.
Every [absentee ballot] envelope should have prepaid postage on it, so you don't need to find a stamp. You can use your home mailbox. You can use a neighborhood post office box or any postal box in the United States.
What happens to the absentee ballots after you vote early or by mail and the ballots are collected?
They get sorted by your voting ward and alphabetized, and they are stored until Election Day. On Election Day, if you are in a central count municipality, Milwaukee is one of those, Green Bay, Wauwatosa, those are going to be processed in one central location where oftentimes you have bipartisan teams.
Every voter, just like when you go to the polls, is going to be assigned a voter number in the absentee log. The workers are going to review the envelope, make sure it meets the requirements of a voter signature, a witness signature, witness address, and then the ballot gets opened and then set aside to go through a tabulator.
Now, if at any point your ballot is damaged, or if it looks like maybe coffee spilled on it, or it gets jammed in a machine, there will always be teams of two to reconstruct your ballot to the fullest extent possible. Everything gets documented and extensive paperwork, and then the new ballot gets fed through the machine.
Why might it take a while for results to come in after polls close on election night?
I like to stress that it is a very, very accurate process, and recounts have shown that time and time again, but it takes time. You don't ever want to rush your bank teller when they're counting out your money. I often say you don't want to rush your tabulators or your election workers when they're counting your votes.
It's not as simple as ripping open envelopes and feeding them through a machine. There's a lot of documentation involved.
Now, if you don't have a central count municipality, your ballots are going to be taken to your polling place and teams of two election workers are going to open ballots again. You're going to get a voter number in the poll book, and then those ballots get fed through a machine. Every municipality operates a little bit differently. But for instance, in Madison, I know they take five ballots at a time, get in line with voters, and then check those ballots in, open them up, and feed them through a machine.
A lot of times, the election workers who are processing absentee ballots will have identification, like a vest that says absentee ballot counter or some other indication on the table where they're working so that you know what those ballots are that they're handling. Because you'll see an election worker walking around, oftentimes with ballots, and you want to know whose ballots are those. Why are you walking around the polling place with the ballot? And that's what's taking place.
What are some of the early voting trends in Wisconsin?
Nearly 60% of Wisconsin voters, or two million people, voted absentee in the 2020 general election. I don't think we're going to see quite that high a number of people choosing to vote early or by mail, but it's certainly going to be higher than pre-pandemic levels.
It’s a matter of convenience. We like to set our own schedules and have multiple locations to choose from, and we see that as a nationwide trend.
So, for instance, in [the city of] Milwaukee in 2020 there were 170,000 absentee ballots by mail and from early voting. My guess is that we'd see that number hover around 100,000 in the city of Milwaukee, and that's out of just under 300,000 registered voters.
