Please join me in thanking our Clerk’s Office, pollworkers and the Wisconsin National Guard for their work on yesterday’s election! Check out South Milwaukee results from the 2020 August partisan primary here.
Congratulations to Issy Ramon, who I was proud to endorse in his race.
The headline, however, is absentee voting.
Of the 2,940 ballots cast, 68% of those (2,003) were absentee, continuing an amazing shift in how people vote. This began with the April pandemic election, and I’m not sure it’s going to swing back.
The Clerk’s Office is ready, and has been preparing for the increase in absentee voting since the start of the pandemic. After the spring election, we invested in three new voting machines. This gives us added capacity to process absentee ballots, which, per state law, can only be counted (run through the machines) on election day.
We redeployed staff to quickly process absentee ballot requests in the weeks leading up to the election, and then, on election day, redirected more pollworkers to that part of our election operation. We also had the help of 10 members of the Wisconsin National Guard on Tuesday, and we assigned nine of them to Central Count, processing absentee ballots.
On to November! To request your absentee ballot for that election — or to confirm you have already requested one — visit https://myvote.wi.gov/en-us/.
South Milwaukee Blog 