Patrick Marley
MADISON, Wis. — Early voting kicked off in this battleground state this week with computer delays and long lines.
Voters waited as long as three hours Tuesday to cast ballots in West Bend, a city of about 32,000, city clerk Jilline Dobratz said. State computer issues reared up again Wednesday, and by midafternoon, voters had to wait about 90 minutes to vote in the community 40 miles northwest of Milwaukee, she said. Residents were not used to anything like it.
“Waiting in line for an hour is unheard of,” Dobratz said.
In-person early voting began Tuesday in the state and will run through Nov. 3. More than 97,000 residents cast their ballots in person Tuesday — about 18,000 more than the first day of early voting in 2020, when voters were more heavily relying on mail voting because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Voters on Tuesday and Wednesday faced long waits as clerks tried to print labels with their names and addresses. The labels are affixed to the ballot envelopes that voters are required to use.
We’ve had long, long lines,” said Paulina Gutierrez, the elections director in Milwaukee.
“We always expect long lines on the first day, and turnout has been strong,” Gutierrez said at the end of Tuesday. “So it’s like we’re happy to see it. The problem is that the processing is taking so much longer.”
Ordinarily, each label can be printed immediately. But since Tuesday, they have taken two minutes or longer to print, clerks said. Each delay causes a chain reaction that exacerbates the long lines.
State election officials announced late Tuesday that the computer issues had been resolved but acknowledged Wednesday that the problems had recurred. They said the printing delays appeared to be part of an unspecified information technology problem affecting other government agencies as well.
The state elections commission did not provide a timeline for fixing the problem, saying it was still analyzing it. A spokeswoman for the agency responsible for the state’s computer systems did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
For the time being, the elections commission recommended clerks write information on the ballot envelopes by hand. Clerks called that solution less than ideal because it takes longer than their normal process and handwriting is more difficult to read than printed labels.
Other states have seen a surge in early voting this year, with Georgia setting a record. In Wisconsin, the leaders of both political parties urged their supporters to take advantage of a voting method that is supposed to be quick and convenient. Republican members of Congress touted their plans to vote early, while Democrats held a rally in Madison on Tuesday featuring former president Barack Obama and the vice-presidential nominee, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.
Obama’s event led to a flood of voters heading to the polls around the same time. Many of them had to wait an hour because of the printing delays, according to the city.
Initially, state officials told clerks Tuesday that the printing delays were rooted in higher-than-expected turnout. That explanation frustrated Jacob Crosetto, the clerk in Reedsburg, a city of 10,000 people that’s an hour northwest of Madison.
“I’m just sitting here, like, ‘Are we living on the same planet? What do you mean? You didn’t expect a high turnout?’” he said. “I mean, ‘Hello, have you seen a TV in the last three months?’”
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