OUTAGAMIE COUNTY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Clerks across the state are preparing for one of the biggest Election Days in history.
FOX 11 reached out to nearly 10 clerks Monday. Understandably, most were either too busy to interview, or didn’t respond.
“The clerk’s team has been working, pretty much, non-stop over the last eight weeks, preparing for the election,” Little Chute village administrator James Fenlon said.
Wisconsin is bracing for a presidential Election Day, unlike any other. Record numbers of people have already cast their votes.
“In the last Presidential election, we had 87% of registered voters turn out, so I’m expecting that we’ll have or exceed that,” said Kami Lynch, Appleton city clerk. “We’ve already had 52% of our voters vote by absentee, at this point.”
Outagamie County clerk Lori O’Bright says in 2016, the county saw about 90,000 voters.
“If we have 54,000 ballots returned, we can expect to see about 40,000 or 45,000 people showing up to the polls tomorrow,” O’Bright said.
Fenlon says the village has had roughly 4,500 absentee ballot requests.
“Of those 4,500, 1,500 voted in-person, and so we only have 250 ballots outstanding that have not been returned yet,” he said. “We’ve been getting those in pretty steadily.”
Since Friday and into Monday, the Village of Little Chute has been preparing all of the absentee ballots that people have returned, so that they can process those starting Tuesday morning at 7 a.m.
The U.S. Supreme Court did not extend Wisconsin’s absentee ballot deadline for mailed ballots, so any received after the polls close, won’t count.
Lynch says all ballots will be counted, it’ll just take extra time this year.
“It’s a little bit more time consuming, processing absentees, so I don’t know when we can anticipate being done,” she said. “It will be a late night, but we will get them all done.”
O’Bright says, “The municipalities, and their poll workers, they’re doing an excellent job. They’ll be ready.”
If all goes smoothly, Little Chute’s village administrator expects to have final tallies into the county clerk, by roughly 8:30 p.m.
“We’re ready,” said Fenlon. “I think, so long as there’s no surprises, we’ll be all set and good for a good vote tally to the county, shortly after the polls close.”
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