Wisconsin voters who are voting absentee by mail must act soon, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
“More than 390,000 Wisconsin voters have requested absentee ballots by mail, but less than 96,000 have been recorded as returned,” said Meagan Wolfe, administrator for the Wisconsin Elections Commission. “Your ballot must arrive by Election Day to be counted and the US Postal Service says it can take up to seven days for a letter to arrive. If you’re planning to mail your ballot back, you should mail it back as soon as possible.”
Voters who still need to request an absentee ballot by mail should also act immediately, Wolfe said. Registered voters can make their requests online at https://myvote.wi.gov.
“Please do not wait for the legal deadline – which is 5 p.m. on Thursday, April 1 – for your clerk to receive your request for an absentee ballot by mail,” Wolfe said. “If you wait until the deadline, you risk not getting your ballot in time to vote it and return it by 8 p.m. on Election Day.”
“The absentee by mail deadlines in law don’t correspond with the amount of time it may take to receive and return your ballot by mail,” Wolfe said. “That is why the Wisconsin Elections Commission urges voters who wish to vote absentee by mail to request them as soon as possible.”
Voters running up against absentee voting by-mail deadlines have the option of voting absentee in-person in their clerk’s office or a satellite voting location.
“We want citizens to choose the option for voting that works best for them, but time is running out. For voters who choose to vote absentee by mail, we want to be sure they have the information they need to navigate that process,” said Wolfe. “Of course, every voter who is eligible to vote in the state can also vote in-person absentee in their clerk’s office or at their polling place on election day.”
Statistics showing the numbers of absentee ballots requested and returned are available on the WEC website: https://elections.wi.gov/publications/statistics/absentee. The reports show numbers for individual counties and municipalities.
Here are some key deadlines and facts to remember for the upcoming Spring Election on April 6, 2021 – whether you’re voting by absentee ballot or in-person.
Tuesday, March 30, 2021: Practical deadline for voters to return their absentee ballots by mail to their municipal clerk’s office. The US Postal Service recommends allowing one week for your completed absentee ballot to be delivered to your municipal clerk’s office.
After this date, voters should find other options for returning their absentee ballot, which include delivering it to their municipal clerk’s office or a secure drop box if one is provided by their clerk. Visit https://myvote.wi.gov to find out if your clerk offers drop box. Most voters can also deliver their ballot to their polling place by 8 p.m. on Election Day, but there are some exceptions.
Tuesday is also the first day that hospitalized voters may appoint an agent to retrieve and deliver an absentee ballot from their municipal clerk’s office. The deadline for hospitalized voters to request and return their ballot is Election Day. More information is available here: https://elections.wi.gov/publications/brochures/voter-guides/hospitalized-electors.
Thursday, April 1, 2021: The legal deadline for most voters to request an absentee ballot by mail. Wolfe said it is unrealistic for any voter to wait this late to request an absentee ballot and expect to receive it in time to return it by Election Day to be counted.
Friday is also the legal deadline for indefinitely confined voters to request to become permanent absentee voters, but Wolfe urged anyone needing this service not to wait.
Friday, April 2, 2021: Final day to register to vote at your municipal clerk’s office. Visit https://myvote.wi.gov to find your local clerk’s contact information and hours of operation.
Sunday, April 4, 2021: The last day that municipal clerks may offer in-person absentee voting in their office or a satellite location. Most clerks only offer absentee voting in their office until Friday, April 2, and office hours vary by municipality. Please visit https://myvote.wi.gov to find your municipal clerk office’s contact information and learn more about absentee voting in-person for the upcoming election.
Tuesday, April 6, 2021: Election Day. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., and voters who are returning an absentee ballot to their polling place must get it there by 8 p.m. Voters returning their ballot to the clerk’s office or a drop box should do so early in the day, so the clerk has enough time to send ballots to the proper location for counting by the 8 p.m. deadline.
There are 39 municipalities including Milwaukee and Green Bay that count absentee ballots at a central location. Voters in those cities, villages and towns should check with their municipal clerk about where to return their ballots on Election Day. A list of central count municipalities is available here: https://elections.wi.gov/clerks/guidance/central-count-absentee.
Memberships
The real voter fraud problem
[img_assist|nid=63922|title=Good book|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=125|height=178]Now that the recall elections are winding down (two more to go; don't forget to vote Aug. 16 if you live in the districts of Democrats Robert Wirch and Jim Holperin), maybe we can get the Republicans to finish up their ostensible project to prevent vote fraud. Starting with their own backers.
As it turns out, the biggest threat to vote integrity appears not to be individual citizens who vote in the wrong place or more than once or illegally altogether, but organized political institutions that clearly engage in vote suppression. The examples from this round of campaigns have been clumsy and absurdly transparent:
* Mailers turned up from Americans For Prosperity Wisconsin (funded in large measure by the notorious Koch Brothers), addressed to voters in two of the Republican-incumbent recall districts. The mailers asked recipients to fill out an absentee ballot application, and send it in by August 11, two days after Election Day. Americans for Prosperity told newsmen that the misinformation was “just a typo.”
Further, the mailer return address was to a place described as Absentee Ballot Application Processing Center, which is not an official government name or address. Indeed, the PO Box address appears to be used by other conservative groups. Yeah, mail your anti-Republican absentee ballot to...the Republicans! That'll be safe.
Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert joked that voters might as well send their absentee ballots to Santa Claus in care of the North Pole.
* Meanwhile, Wisconsin Right Life engaged in similar sleight of hand via robocalls from D.C. to Democratic voters. Questioned by reporters, an organization spokesman said the wrong date for the election just referred to plans to send an absentee ballot for one of the later elections. Oh, really? Gee, thanks for being so clear and ahead of the game. Judge for yourself. Here's the script from the robocall:
“Hello, this is Barbara Lyons from Wisconsin Right to Life. I’m calling today to let you know that you will be receiving an absentee ballot application for the upcoming recall elections in the mail in the next few days. These recall elections are very important and voting absentee will ensure that your vote is counted and that we can maintain a pro-family, pro-life state senate. We hope that we can count on you to complete that application and send it back to us within 7 days.”‘
But any Democratic voter who followed Lyons' advice for the Aug. 9 elections would have been unwittingly disenfranchised. Even if they were careful enough not to send their ballot back in care of the opposition. Arguably, Right to Life hoped that some voters would be confused by the message and not act in time to vote, given the seven-day language in a contest where there was far less time than that to actually file an absentee ballot -- thanks to Republicans, who had just enacted a new state law to narrow that window. Must be more of that swell bipartisanship Gov. Walker is suddenly spouting about.
All this from the political partisans who are also busy shouting that people shouldn't trust government anymore.
A Government Accountability Board (GAB) spokesman offered Wisconsin voters good advice: Those voting absentee should contact their municipal clerk for the proper forms. “Don’t trust a political party or interest group to get you your ballot,” he said. No spit, Sherlock!
But besides issuing mere cautionary news releases, the GAB ought to get tough. Election law and GAB rules ought to provide sanctions for, and ban the mailing of, absentee ballots by third party groups altogether, since all it does is add to the obfuscation and confusion we already are experiencing in our election process.
Telling voters HOW to get an absentee ballot from an official election office? No problem. Sending the ballots to phony return addresses while listing wrong deadlines for submission? That's like pretending to be a police officer and then claiming when you are caught that you were only trying to make a citizen's arrest.
As always, the watchword here should be: Make them accountable. We're talking to you, "Accountability" Board.
As for Republicans: A political party sanctioning such unethical behavior clearly doesn't have much faith in the ultimate appeal of its own policy convictions. So, GOP, quit it out with the hypocrisy and carnival sideshow hucksterism, already. Either you're for clean elections altogether, or your Voter ID law is just, along with your legislative district gerrymandering, another effort at partisan vote suppression, like these latest scams perpetrated by your enablers. Come clean or stay dirty. We'll be watching.
Press releases and other content not written by a specific Eye On Dunn County author are listed as Eye On Dunn County Staff.
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