This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.
Greenfield resident Nereida Loma planned to vote by mail in November, as she usually does. But the ballot she said she requested never arrived, and city officials had no record of her application.
Rather than risk missing her chance to vote, Loma went to City Hall in the Milwaukee suburb on Tuesday to cast an in-person absentee ballot.
“When you put it in the mail, you don’t know if it’s going to count — if it’s going to come or not,” said Loma, who said she plans to vote in-person from now on.
Loma is among the thousands of Wisconsin voters reconsidering how they cast their ballots amid widely reported issues with the U.S. Postal Service and a continued shift away from mail voting after a pandemic-era peak.
Ahead of the November election, Wisconsin voters have requested about 20% fewer mail ballots than at this point in 2022, and those who have received them are returning them at a slower rate. Election clerks and experts say the trend could reflect concerns about mail delivery, or voters choosing to participate in person despite requesting a ballot.
Several of those voters were at the polls on Tuesday, Wisconsin’s first day of early voting. In Greenfield, Philip Zimmer said that he’s typically an early in-person absentee voter because it’s the easiest option for him. He doesn’t consider mail voting a viable option because of the growing politicization of what was once a standard way to cast a ballot.
“With all this Trump stuff and everything,” he said, “I don’t even bother.”
In New Berlin, a voter who identified herself only as Barb said she typically votes early and not by mail because you “never know if it’s gonna get here.”
In Milwaukee, voter Shan Nelson-Rowe said he has always preferred in-person absentee voting. It’s simpler than mail voting and quicker than voting on Election Day, he said. Plus, he doesn’t trust the Postal Service. He’s noticed others growing wary of it too: His neighbor, who usually mails back his ballot, plans to use a drop box this year because he no longer trusts the mail to deliver it, Nelson-Rowe said.
USPS did not return a request for comment sent Tuesday.
Clerks respond to trend away from mail voting
Clerks are seeing fewer ballot requests and adjusting their advice to voters as concerns about postal delays grow.
Inside the New Berlin City Hall, Clerk Rubina Medina told Votebeat her office is receiving just 25 to 30 mail ballot requests a day, down from 75 to 100 in past elections.
Meanwhile, in-person absentee voting appears to be holding steady. Voters lined up at City Hall on Tuesday morning, and Medina said turnout on the first day of early voting was about as busy as usual.
“The voters are saying they don’t trust the mail,” she said. “We hear that often.”
She said the distrust in the Postal Service is often unwarranted and driven by the media, but that she also does recognize that mail is slower than it used to be.
“We used to advertise a mail-it-back Monday, the week prior to Election Day,” she said. “We now advertise that two weeks prior.”
Election officials across the state have been offering similar advice for months, but the numbers show voters are turning their ballots in more slowly than they have in the past.
As of Tuesday, two weeks before the election, voters had returned 51.5% of the ballots they’ve been sent, down from 55.5% at the same time in 2022. The slowdown is widespread: In 63 of the state’s 72 counties, voters have returned a smaller share of their ballots than they had at this point four years ago.
Across the state, absentee voting is also down so far compared with the November midterm election in 2022. By this time in 2022, voters had returned nearly 259,000 ballots, 26% higher than the current returns of 191,000. The number of sent-out ballots has dropped about 20%, from 466,000 to 372,000.
Clerks and experts respond to what the numbers show
Much of the drop-off in traditional absentee voting can be credited to the passage of time since the pandemic. More voters are simply comfortable voting in person, UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden said. But, he said, trust in the U.S. Postal Service has dropped dramatically too. An NPR/PBS News/Marist poll found that only 58% of Americans are confident about timely election mail delivery, compared with 71% two years ago.
“Voters are looking for ways to get around the Postal Service,” Burden said. “That can mean waiting until in-person voting opens up in one form or another, or getting a ballot by mail but finding another way to get it back to their clerk’s office.”
To a lesser extent, absentee voting has also gone down because more voters have exited Wisconsin’s list of voters who automatically received absentee ballots on a permanent basis and because a series of high-profile errors around the state involving absentee ballots may have deterred some voters from voting absentee, Burden said.
Marathon County Clerk Kim Trueblood, a Republican, agreed voters are now motivated to bypass the mail. She expects many voters who have requested a mailed ballot will ultimately leave it blank and instead vote in-person on Election Day.
Sheboygan County Clerk Jon Dolson, also a Republican, agreed. And Milwaukee election chief Paulina Gutiérrez said more and more voters over the last few elections have been dropping off their ballots on Election Day citing similar concerns. She said Milwaukee anticipates that voters “are more comfortable” dropping their ballots off themselves.
Green County Clerk Arianna Voegeli, a Democrat, said she believes part of the drop-off in the share of returned ballots may be due to mail delays.
Some clerks are experiencing that slowdown firsthand: Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell, a Democrat, said his son studying in Ireland requested a mail ballot in September. It was sent in late September, he said, and his son still hasn’t received it.
Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe said she doesn’t know exactly what’s behind the lower ballot-return rate, but said she has heard a lot of concern from voters about mail delays.
“We’re just trying to get the message out that if people still have a by-mail absentee ballot and they want to return it by mail, they need to do so as soon as possible, she said. ”We really do recommend that if you’re returning your ballot by mail, that you do so at least two weeks in advance of the election.”
That was Oct. 20.
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
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