Voters urged to quickly return absentee ballots for Aug. 11 election.
They must be received by 8 p.m. election day
Election officials are urging voters to return their absentee ballots as soon as possible ahead of the Aug. 11 partisan primary as clerks see a record number of absentee ballots returned.
“I wouldn’t hesitate if they already have their ballot to put it in the mail today or tomorrow,” said Claire WoodallVogg, executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission. “But after that, I’d really emphasize for peace of mind using a drop-off site or one of our early voting locations.”
Meagan Wolfe, Wisconsin’s chief election official, said that the U.S. Postal Service has said it could take a week for mail from voters to reach clerks’ offices.
Thursday at 5 p.m. is the deadline to request an absentee ballot for regular and permanent overseas voters.
Absentee ballots must be received by 8 p.m. Aug. 11.
Voters can check the status of their absentee ballots at myvote.wi.gov.
More than 330,000 voters throughout Wisconsin have returned their absentee ballots for next week’s election, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
This is already a record number of absentee ballots returned for the August partisan primary, commission spokesman Reid Magney said.
The 331,097 absentee ballots returned by Wisconsin voters so far in the partisan primary is more than three times the 108,162 returned in the 2018 partisan primary, and more than four times the 76,529 returned in the 2016 partisan primary.
So far 836,469 absentee ballot applications have been reported received by municipal clerks, and clerks reported sending 821,378 ballots so far, the commission said.
There were 1.16 milliontotal absentee ballots cast in the April election, which saw an influx of mail-in ballots as voters contended with the coronavirus pandemic, and 819,316 cast in the November 2016 presidential election, according to the Elections Commission.