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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsInside Wisconsin's Election Mess: Thousands of Missing or Nullified Ballots
Three tubs of absentee ballots that never reached voters were discovered in a postal center outside Milwaukee. At least 9,000 absentee ballots requested by voters were never sent, and others recorded as sent were never received. Even when voters did return their completed ballots in the mail, thousands were postmarked too late to count or not at all.
Cracks in Wisconsins vote-by-mail operation are now emerging after the states scramble to expand that effort on the fly for voters who feared going to the polls in Tuesdays elections. The takeaways that the election network and the Postal Service were pushed to the brink of their capabilities, and that mistakes were clearly made are instructive for other states if they choose to broaden vote-by-mail methods without sufficient time, money and planning.
More than 860,000 completed absentee ballots had been returned by Tuesday, already a record for Wisconsin spring elections. But for thousands of other voters, who never received their ballots, there was only one recourse: putting their health at risk and defying a stay-at-home order to vote in person during the coronavirus pandemic. Many chose not to show up.
Federal health officials have suggested that expanding voting by mail could help reduce crowds at polling places and therefore make elections safer amid the outbreak. The issues that have arisen in Wisconsin offer a warning for other states of the potential pitfalls of a rapid, last-minute expansion of absentee balloting, particularly one marred by a flurry of court challenges and 11th-hour rulings that created confusion and chaos.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/us/politics/wisconsin-election-absentee-coronavirus.html
AllaN01Bear
(18,119 posts)cagefreesoylentgreen
(838 posts)I suspect thats by design.
SheltieLover
(57,073 posts)Baitball Blogger
(46,698 posts)SheltieLover
(57,073 posts)No info released till 4/13 or 4/14. Not sure why.
Baitball Blogger
(46,698 posts)There was a straw vote in this town that involved a beautification project taxing project. The City Manager extended the days to allow ballots to come in, which would change the results. In the end, it didn't matter. A lawsuit had pushed the issue to the State Court and they decided the city could pass a beautification special tax without the city's approval. If there is any reason why other Florida residents should dig up what happened here in the nineties, it is for that reason. Our city was a test case.