In a Wednesday morning press call, Wisconsin Elections Commission administrator Meagan Wolfe said Election Day in Wisconsin was conducted smoothly.
“Our democratic system worked yesterday, in part because of election officials who showed up each day to ensure that every eligible American could participate in our election process,” Wolfe said.
Though every city, town and village in Wisconsin has released unofficial results, election officials will start processing the official results over the next few weeks, Wolfe said.
After each municipality and county in Wisconsin has verified the results, the WEC will verify and certify results statewide by Dec. 1, Wolfe said. There may also be ballot recounts during this certification process, Wolfe said.
“Wisconsin does not have automatic recounts,” Wolfe said. “For a candidate to request a recount the margin between the top two candidates who received the most votes in the race has to be 1% or less.”
Currently, around 99% of votes for the presidential race have been counted in Wisconsin and former President Donald Trump is ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris by 0.8%.
If a recount happened, election officials would review each ballot to ensure it was tabulated correctly, and then partisan representatives could bring up specific challenges to a bipartisan recount board, Wolfe said. During the 2020 election, this process was live-streamed for the public to view, Wolfe said.
Until the election certification process is completed, the WEC will not know official voter turnout rates, but Wolfe said turnout was potentially very high across the state.
The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater polling location had unexpectedly high voter turnout, so a judge ruled to extend the voting deadline from 8:00 p.m. to 10:30 p.m., according to WMTV 15.
In an interview with The Badger Herald last night, Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Ben Wikler said he is expecting a large turnout in Madison — and especially around the UW-Madison campus.
