MADISON, Wis. — If you’re like a lot of people this year, you’re casting your vote for president absentee.
The Madison city clerk is expecting about 80 percent of people in the city to do that this year, which is up dramatically from years prior. This has caused the clerk’s office to scale up a process usually used on a few thousand ballots to one used on tens of thousands of ballots.
Jim Verbick, the deputy city clerk, said the two other elections this year acted as a dry run to make this task more feasible.
“We could sort of work out the process of ordering a lot more inserts, a lot more envelopes, getting our hourly folks, our poll workers, to help us out,” he said. “I feel like between those two elections that sort of helped us refine the system we have right now.”
It’s #NationalVoterEducationWeek!
Follow these steps each day to make sure you are #voteready for Nov 3. Start today by checking your voter reg at https://t.co/W0BDmZdsuc.#MadisonVotes2020 #vote #elections2020 #NVEW2020 #OctoberVoter pic.twitter.com/kvVH3pR8mP
— Madison WI Clerk (@MadisonWIClerk) October 5, 2020
The system takes up multiple rooms and floors of the City-County Building. In one room on the third floor, poll workers stuff unmarked envelopes with voting instructions, a flyer about the census and an “I voted” sticker before adding labels for the voter. On the first floor, a poll worker pulls the ballot with the correct races for each voter and pairs them with an election packet. Then the packets go back up to the third floor, where poll workers double-check the ballot is correct before folding it and putting it in the envelope with the rest of the packet.
The envelopes with the election packets are then sent to voters through the mail. A spokesperson for USPS declined a request from News 3 Now to view the process for election mail in area post offices.
In a statement he said USPS’ No. 1 priority between now and Election Day is “secure, on-time delivery of the nation’s election mail.”
“We employ a robust process to ensure proper handling of all Election Mail, including ballots,” he wrote. “This includes close coordination and partnerships with election officials at the local and state levels.”
Once a ballot is returned poll workers check in each ballot and sort them by voting ward. In the Common Council chambers, a group of poll workers alphabetize the ballots and put them in boxes they can take to polling places on Election Day.
“Once the polling place is ready to be opened at 7 in the morning, they’ll already have these boxes of envelopes and they can start processing absentees as soon as the polling place opens,” Verbick said.
Until Nov. 3, Verbick said the room ballots are kept in is locked and monitored by security cameras inside the City-County Building.
The clerk’s office continues to remind voters not interested in voting in person on Election Day to request and return an absentee ballot as soon as possible.
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