JANESVILLE Absentee voting by mail-in ballot might be sluggish, but early in- person voting is surging.
The Janesville City Clerks office has seen a five-fold increase in early in-person voting after City Hall opened its early voting precinct on Tuesday, an uptick that comes alongside another new trend continuous poll observation.
Janesville City Clerk Lori Stottler said City Hall, the citys only early in-person voting precinct, has seen between 500 and 550 voters a day. Thats a spike in in- person absentee voting compared to the typical early voter turnout at City Hall of between 100 and 150 people, Stottler said.
Dane and Milwaukee counties both have reported increases in early in-person voting.
Stottler said this week its hard to identify a single explanation for the surge. But in just a half-hour period on Thursday afternoon, more than two-dozen voters came and went from the elevators at City Hall. Stottler said shes had to order in extra poll workers to handle the uptick.
I noticed that the (poll-worker) team looked really spent at the end of the day, Stottler said.
The spike in absentee voting comes after the city saw just 3,100 of the 5,500 Janesville absentee voters whod ordered mail-in ballots have returned their ballots. Thats a sluggish pace going into the final run up to a fall election, Stottler said.
Stottler said other clerks and some poll analysts have questioned if the change this fall could be tied to the worries over whether the U.S. Postal Service will deliver mail-in ballots in time a concern that comes alongside efforts by the President to place new restrictions on mail-in voting and speculation that federal agents could turn up at Wisconsin polling places.
In Rock County, voter turnout in midterms has been high in the last few fall general elections, and early voting and mail-in absentee voting is a significant driver.
In the 2022 fall midterm, 70% of Rock Countys registered voters cast ballots a total of 65,000 votes. Of those voters, about 9,065 were Janesville residents who cast absentee ballots by mail or in person.
That means that city of Janesville absentee voters in the 2022 midterm election made up about 14% of the countys entire voter turnout.
That makes Janesville City Hall something of a local nexus for gauging voter behavior, and potentially, overall voter turnout.