More people voted this fall than in 2020 election, as La Crosse County clerk Dankmeyer says nonstop campaigning helped

A strong turnout for the presidential election and La Crosse County clerk Ginny Dankmeyer believes that all the campaign activity contributed to that.

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“The texts you got, the political mailings you got, the nonstop phone calls you got, it energized people,” Dankemeyer said Wednesday on WIZM’s La Crosse Talk.

About 5,000 more people showed up to vote on Tuesday in La Crosse County than during the 2020 presidential election.

“I don’t know how many times we had the candidates” here, Dankmeyer added. “It energized people to get up and go to the polls and vote.”

The official canvass happens Monday, but Dankmeyer said the county already had 72,000 registered voters when the polls opened on Tuesday.

Many more registered throughout the day, when they showed up to cast ballots.

Dankmeyer estimated 80-90 percent turnout may have to be changed when all the numbers are added up.

Plenty of people were registering to vote for the first time. Not just young, first-time voters, either, Dankmeyer said, but also people in their 60s and 70s, “because they felt it was important that they needed to do that.”