More than 1.5 million Wisconsinites have already cast their ballots ahead of Tuesday’s presidential election. Wisconsin’s top elections official says the state is poised to set a new record for early in-person absentee voting.
All told, more than 41 percent of all active, registered voters in Wisconsin have already cast absentee ballots, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Of those, nearly 950,000 were in-person absentee ballots, which were cast in clerks offices or early voting sites.
During a Monday briefing, Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe said there have been nearly 645,000 mail-in absentee ballots requested by voters for the presidential election.
“To kind of contrast that, in 2020, the volume of by-mail absentee ballots set records,” Wolfe said. “This year, it appears there’s a record number of in-person absentee ballots that were cast.”
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, absentee voting exploded during Wisconsin’s 2020 presidential election. That year, WEC data shows nearly 1.9 million ballots were returned. Of that total, there were just 644,843 people who cast early, in-person absentee ballots.