Early Voting Opens With Excitement, Some Lines And Voters Camping Out

From the Wisconsin Examiner:

By Henry Redman
October 21, 2020

As early voting opened in Wisconsin on Tuesday voters in cities, suburbs and rural towns came out in droves to cast their ballots — sometimes camping out an hour before local clerks even opened their offices.

More than 500 people voted in Sun Prairie; La Crosse averaged 100 voters an hour and the small Village of Oakland had collected 75 ballots by mid-day. The early rush added to a total expected turnout of more than 3 million Wisconsin votes this fall.

With excitement high for the presidential election and concerns about voting in-person on Election Day due to the COVID-19 pandemic and delays in the mail, a large proportion of Wisconsin voters have taken advantage of alternative voting opportunities.

Oakland, in Jefferson County, has about 2,200 registered voters and 954 of them had requested absentee ballots, according to Village Clerk Chris Astrella. Astrella said there was a short line outside village hall for early voting on Tuesday but the most popular option is the drop box that has seen a “tsunami” of ballots.

In a normal election, Astrella says he’d probably see 10-20 people on the first day of early voting.

“It’s not unexpected, obviously, we all knew it was coming but nothing close to this,” he says. “We’re planning, over the next couple of weeks, this is all we’re going to be doing, open to close — and that’s fine — but people need to be cognizant that there may be a line and we can only help one voter at a time.”

In Sun Prairie, City Clerk Elena Hilby expects close to 100% turnout when all is said and done. On Tuesday the city’s two early voting locations, city hall and the library, were steady the whole day with lines maxing out at around 20 minutes.

The first voters arrived at 7:30, a full half hour before voting opened.

Already 12,000 Sun Prairie residents have requested absentee ballots, with Hilby expecting more to come. She says she’s anticipating 80% of the city’s turnout to be absentee, which is why she says she’ll only need one open polling location on Election Day,

“Over 500 people voted just today,” Hilby says. “It’s very popular and it’s going pretty well. We expected to be slammed today because it’s the first day.”

Further north, in La Crosse, voters started lining up an hour before the office opened, says Clerk Teri Lehrke. Of the city’s more than 30,000 registered voters, almost one-third have already returned their absentee ballots, she says.

On Tuesday, Lehrke says the voters came at a steady pace with lines never getting very long and no problems.

“We expected it to be busy on the first day,” she says. “That was a good amount of people. It went pretty smoothly, pretty steady all day long.”

In-person absentee voting runs through Nov. 1 and absentee ballots can be requested until Oct. 29. Voters need a photo ID to vote. Election Day is Nov. 3.

This story was originally published by the Wisconsin Examiner. For more stories from the Wisconsin Examiner, visit WisconsinExaminer.com.