After voters waited for hours to vote absentee in person and clerks stayed up for hours to count those votes on Election Day, Wisconsin is now considering moving to early voting to reduce time, error and costs.

This year there was an abundance of in-person absentee voters, which caused delays in counting votes on Election Day, according to Elections Division Administrator Nat Robinson.

“In some jurisdictions, like Milwaukee, they had to resume the count the next day because [election workers] had to count until one in the morning,” Robinson said. “This was totally due to the large amount of absentee ballots.”

The Madison City Clerk’s Office experienced long lines the days before the election, though this caused no major problems on Election Day. Unlike Milwaukee, all votes were counted and submitted to the Clerk’s Office by the end of the night on Election Day.

Many voters wanted to avoid long lines on Election Day, increasing the number of absentee voters from the 2004 election. However, many ended up waiting several hours, whereas people voting on Election Day generally didn’t have much of a wait, Robinson said.

Milwaukee Deputy Director of Election Commission Neil Albrecht said the biggest issue with absentee voting this year could have been some voters thinking their vote would not count.

Albrecht said the confusion came from the difference between in-person absentee voting and early voting. While other states use early voting to allow voters to directly place their ballots into the machine to be counted early, Wisconsin has in-person absentee voting in which votes are counted on Election Day.

“People were more than confused; they were disappointed to see that their ballots were only placed in the envelopes and asked, ‘Why isn’t my ballot going into a machine?'” Albrecht said.

Albrecht said absentee voting slowed the process down on Election Day, and errors such as voting for two different presidential candidates on the same ballot occurred.

“Things went slower than what we anticipated; a lot of the reason was because people made errors on their ballot and with absentee ballots they are not there to correct the error,” Albrecht said.

It is possible that the large amount of first-time voters was the reason for errors like voting twice on one ballot, according to Albrecht. Such errors could have been avoided if the state switched to early voting, since the voter is present when they put the ballot through the machine, allowing errors to be caught and corrected on the spot.

Replacing absentee voting with early voting would not only help correct administrative errors but also reduce costs to the state, Albrecht said.

“When you vote an in-person absentee ballot, somebody basically has to assume your role, an election worker, which is labor intensive and a costly process that would really be reduced with early voting,” Albrecht added.

While early voting could solve some of these problems, details are yet to be decided.

“We are going to learn from the other states that use early voting, see what the benefits are and then make a recommendation,” Albrecht said.