With the fall elections more than a week away, the Madison City Clerk’s office is seeing near record-breaking early voting several days before early voting ends.
As of noon Monday, the city had issued 10,153 absentee ballots, according to a city statement. That number had risen to 10,691 only hours later, according to city clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl.
Of the 10,691 absentee ballots the city has issued so far, 4,316 were to early voters casting their ballots in person at the clerk’s office, rather than mailing the ballots in, Witzel-Behl said.
During the November 2010 election cycle, a total of 12,121 absentee ballots were issued by the clerk’s office, 5,550 of which were cast by early in-person absentee voters.
Witzel-Behl said she anticipates surpassing the 2010 election cycle numbers before absentee voting ends Friday.
“We certainly are on pace to break that in the middle of the week,” she said.
Friday was the busiest day for the clerk’s office during the current election cycle, when 830 in-person absentee ballots were cast. In contrast, the November 2010 election cycle piqued the Friday before the election, when 683 ballots were cast.
“We have a lot more people coming in each day to vote absentee than we have in the past,” Witzel-Behl said.
Since the last major election in 2012, changes to early in-person absentee voting passed by the Legislature have taken effect, according to Reid Magney, spokesperson for the Government Accountability Board.
In 2011, the Legislature cut early voting to two weeks before the election, with the Friday before the election being the last day to vote early. Voting early on weekends was eliminated in 2014.
Despite the changes, the period for absentee voting included extending the timeframe for by-mail voting, he said.
Magney said it’s too early to say what effect these changes will have on voter turnout.
“It’s going to take until after the election when all of the numbers are in to see whether or not it had an impact,” he said.
During the 2010 elections, 270 people voted on the weekend before the election, Witzel-Behl said. A week before that, only 65 people cast their ballots early, she said.
Statewide, a total of 146,196 absentee ballots had been cast as of Friday, according to a GAB statement. Of those ballots, 90,452 of those were cast in person in clerks’ offices.
In-person absentee voting ends this Friday at 7 p.m.
