Covid Chronicles. Chapter 77: Early Voting in Middleton

 

Read chapter 76 here

Photos by Retiring Guy

Saturday, October 24, 2020

JoAnna and I spent the past four afternoons, Tuesday through Friday, standing in front of Middleton City Hall while volunteering as door monitors for early voting. The way it works in Wisconsin, voters have three options to cast their ballots: 

1. Absentee. Request a ballot from their city, village, or town clerk to be mailed to them. 

2. Early in-person voting at a designated location for a prescribed period of time. 

3. The traditional Election Day method. 

In Wisconsin, the deadline to apply for an absentee ballot is the Thursday before an election, but anyone would be a fool to wait that long this year. Wisconsin Democrats launched a ‘Plan Your Vote’ campaign this summer, encouraging people to apply early, well before the election, in light of the dismantling taking place at the U.S. Postal Service, just another GOP voter suppression tactic. JoAnna and I filed our requests in August via MyVote, a voter information website, and our ballots arrived in the mail during our Great Falls trip. We promptly filled them out and deposited them in a specially designated drop box next to the library. According to Middleton City Clerk Lori Burns, about half of the city’s 15,000 registered voters requested an absentee ballot, an indication of the far-reaching success of the ‘Plan Your Vote’ campaign. About 8,000 ballots have already been returned, which means that more than 50% of voters have cast a ballot before the start of in-person early voting. People are clearly determined to vote early this year due to the concerns over Covid and, for Democrats, continuing voter suppression efforts by the GOP, such as invalidating any ballots postmarked on or before Election Day but received after November 3rd. And based on the record-setting number of Biden/Harris yard signs in Middleton, and the absence of Trump/Pence signs at locations that regularly show their support for GOP candidates, Middleton is joining the rest of Dane County, by far the state’s fastest growing county, in running up the score for Democrats. 

Thanks to the ongoing voter suppression efforts of Wisconsin Republicans, early voting here is limited to 11 days — October 20-30. It used to be that municipalities could schedule hours to vote starting in mid- September. Surprisingly, the Middleton city clerk limited early voting to 3 hours per day: 1 to 4 p.m. No evening or weekend hours. Which is why, during the first four days, we have had a line extending from the entrance of City Hall to Middleton Street from 12:45 to 4:15. (As long as people are in line by 4:00, they are able to vote. That’s JoAnna and me standing below the ‘ON’ in “MIDDLETON’.) 

Except for a glitch on the first day of early voting on Tuesday, the lines have moved at an acceptable pace – an average of 1 person voting every minute. Due to social distancing requirements, only 5 voters are allowed inside the building at a time and 3 voting machines are set up in the council chambers. Our primary responsibility as volunteers is to maintain order at the entrance, allowing a person to enter the building after someone else exits. I also walk up and down the line every half hour or so to ask if anyone needs to register to vote. In that way, people can fill out the form while they wait and an employee in the city clerk’s office can input the information so that they’re in the system once inside the building. Based on the number of people in line, I also offer an estimate of a person’s waiting time depending upon where they are in line. Tuesday’s glitch involved the slow processing of labels for each ballot at the central site. In other words, every voting was affected. On that day people at the end of the line waited as long as 90 minutes to vote. During the rest of the week, few people waited more than 45 minutes. Big improvement! Except for Wednesday, the weather has been cool, overcast, and blustery. On Thursday, lots of umbrellas were in use during a series of light rain showers. No matter what the conditions, though, JoAnna and I felt sore after spending so much time standing and not having the opportunity to moving around all that much. 

I took this photo at 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday.

Middleton’s city clerk, the person responsible for overseeing all elections at the local level, estimates that an additional 25% of those registered will vote during the two weeks before Election Day. At the same time, absentee ballots are still being received in the mail, deposited in the drop box, and returned directly to city hall. By November 3rd, it’s likely that 75% of Middleton’s eligible voters will have already cast a ballot. In other words, there is likely to be no crowds or long waiting lines on Election Day.