Early voting shattered, Wisconsin may hit record turnout

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — After shattering early voting records, Wisconsin voters from the rural north to the urban southeast came out in force on an unusually warm Election Day, even as coronavirus cases reached new heights and political tensions ran high in the battleground state.

There were few reports of major problems, as more than 2,400 polls opened Tuesday as planned. Members of the Wisconsin National Guard, dressed in civilian clothes, helped fill about 200 gaps in poll workers statewide.

Behind the scenes, work started as polls opened at 7 a.m. to count the more than 1.9 million absentee ballots that arrived before Election Day. Milwaukee offered a live video stream of its efforts to process ballots in that Democratic stronghold, work that election officials did not expect to be complete until early Wednesday.

“The day started out smoothly, and it is continuing to run smoothly,” Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said Tuesday afternoon.

In Madison, the state’s second-largest city and another liberal stronghold, nearly half of all the absentee ballots had been counted by mid-afternoon, the city clerk said.

The campaigns of both President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden were closely watching absentee and in-person voting for any irregularities that could make a difference. Elections officials urged patience.

The flood of absentee ballots could delay knowing who won Wisconsin.

“If unofficial results don’t come in until early the next morning, it doesn’t mean something went wrong,” Wisconsin’s top elections official Meagan Wolfe cautioned last week. “It means election officials are doing their jobs and making sure every legitimate ballot gets counted.”

Trump won Wisconsin by fewer than 23,000 votes four years ago. Biden sought to put the state back in the Democratic column, where it was for a generation before 2016.

Just over 3 million votes were cast in 2016, and Wisconsin was on pace to exceed that turnout on Tuesday.

In the week leading up to the election, both Biden and Trump campaigned in parts of Wisconsin where their base is strong. Polls showed there were few undecided voters, making turning out the vote all the more vital for both sides.

The coronavirus pandemic motivated over 1.9 million voters to mail in their ballots or vote in person before Election Day, far surpassing the early voting turnout in previous presidential elections. Wisconsin had 3.68 million registered voters as of Sunday, but voters could also register at the polls.

Early voting constituted roughly two-thirds of the total votes cast in 2016, leading to less congestion than usual at several polling places on Tuesday.

“In a large-turnout election, there’s always going to be some lines, but it seems like there’s fewer than I can remember in previous elections,” Wolfe said. “I’m sure that’s partially because there are fewer voters that are left to participate today because there are so many who participated by absentee.”

A long line formed at a polling place in West Allis, not far from a field hospital set up to handle overflow coronavirus patients. But that congestion was attributed to the consolidation of polling places in that Milwaukee suburb.

Wolfe said some polling places had longer lines due to social distancing. Voters were being asked to keep a 6-foot distance between one another due to the pandemic. Wisconsin has seen a steady rise in virus cases since September, and on Election Day set a new record high with 5,771 new cases and 52 more deaths.

Even as the pandemic raged, some voters said they preferred casting their ballots in person.

“The slowdown and compromising of the U.S. Postal Service was a concern,” said Rebecca Kraft, a 41-year-old from Milwaukee. “I trust in the mail-in ballot system, but there was just too much uncertainty. So I said ‘All right, if I’m feeling healthy, I am going to go do it at the polls just to make sure.’”

On the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, graduate student Zach Zalewski, from Antigo, worked as a volunteer outside at a registration table. He said the goal was to ensure no one was inside the polling station for more than 15 minutes.

“We also want things to be as safe as possible,” he said.

About 400 members of the Wisconsin National Guard were activated to work at polls across the state, but only about half of them were tapped to fill in for shortages, Wolfe said. That’s far fewer than the 2,400 who helped with the April presidential primary.

“They are not there for crowd control,” Wolfe said. “They are not there for any sort of law enforcement capacity. They are poll workers.”

Find AP’s full election coverage at http://apnews.com/Election2020