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Good Vibes, Early Voting is Way, Way Up in Wisconsin [1]

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Date: 2024-10-27  

It’s pretty hard to break a record, but Wisconsin is in the process of breaking the record set in 2020 for early in-person and vote by mail. The record, set during the height of the pandemic, saw voters trying to avoid Covid exposure by voting by mail or voting early to avoid the election day crowds. The number of voters is so massive that local media has been running stories every night.

Absentee ballots went out last month and early voting began Tuesday. Records from Tuesday through Friday show that there has been a nearly 40% increase in early in-person voting.

Early in-person absentee voting began Tuesday in the state, and as of Friday morning 292,702 people had voted, the Wisconsin Elections Commission said. That's compared to 209,665 as of the morning of Friday, Oct. 23, 2020. Nearly 1 million absentee ballots have been requested by Wisconsin voters and more than 715,000 ballots have already been returned to clerks, either by mail or by those voting in-person absentee, elections officials said.

However, those might not just be “our” votes anymore since Republicans are now being encouraged to vote early or absentee. Interesting about-face since The Former Guy repeatedly trashed early/absentee voting and now embraces it.

Due to the number of people voting early and glitches in on-site ballot printing, lines stretched for a couple of hours during the first 2 days, drawing media interest and coverage. Those problems have been resolved, but lines of about an hour persist due to the large number of early voters.

Early voting continues through Sunday, November 3, Mailed absentee ballots must be received by 8PM Central Time on election day or they are not counted. Republicans ensure that the law hasn’t been changed to include ballots mailed on time, but received later.

Please note that a Republican State Law also prevents election officials from even opening the absentee ballot envelopes to retrieve the ballot until voting starts on Election Day. This also includes all early in-person voting since those ballots are created and handled just like absentee ballots, folded and placed into absentee ballot envelopes with the required voter and witness signatures (poll workers serve as those witnesses). This massively adds to the time it takes to process all those votes and the fact that those vote totals are usually the last recorded.

I’m feeling good vibes in Wisconsin despite the plethora of lying dark money ads aimed at both Kamala Harris and Tammy Baldwin who is running against a self-funding multi-millionaire California carpetbagger.

Stay tuned. My ballot is in.

Due to my disability, it’s been a while since I wrote so please excuse any problems.

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