MADISON, Wis. — Dane County election officials say after poll workers went into the election with safety concerns about disruptive poll watchers, the biggest issue they ended up facing was a big voter turnout.
“People were really engaged in their democracy and wanting to protect it both the poll workers and the voters,” Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell said, “and there was a lot of positive energy that way all day throughout the county yesterday.”
There wasn’t just a lot of positive energy, there were a lot of voters. In some parts of Dane County, turnout was higher than 85%.
“The polling places were busy, there were some lines, longer and shorter ones,” McDonell said.
RELATED: Dane County voter turnout could reach at least 85%, clerk says
Over the phone, Fitchburg City Clerk Tracy Oldenburg told News 3 Now a “significant increase” in people registering to vote on Election Day contributed to longer lines. Many of them were new residents or new apartment dwellers. The largest numbers of same-day registrants were 602 at one location, and around 450 at another.
In the town of Middleton, those lines were two hours long or more as poll workers processed 294 voters per hour.
“The town of Middleton has been using their town hall for a long time,” McDonell said, “I think the space they have is, they keep growing, and they’re going to need to split their, into another location.”
According to McDonell, other cities like McFarland will likely have to follow suit.
“In a lower turnout election, you can kind of get away with doing it in one place, but when you have a November election you can’t have 6,000, you know, 5,000 or 6,000 voters in one location. It just doesn’t work well. Really 3,500 is kind of the max,” he said.
Looking at some of the competitive races on the ballot, some poll workers requested active shooter and de-escalation training for potential threats.
But according to McDonell, “we had worries about what might happen, people being disruptive in the polling location, but overall things went really well.”
RELATED: Ahead of midterms, safety remains top priority for county election officials
He said there was a strong effort to have more partisan poll workers observing the elections.
“What that allows is people to learn how much security is involved, how the election is actually run because there’s a lot of misinformation out there,” he said.
McDonell hopes this shows people thinking about volunteering in the future that working the polls is secure, and safe.
“This democracy needs you to volunteer and help protect it,” he said. “It’s hard for people to be rude and aggressive to their neighbors and so when you’re there it makes a big difference.”
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