Donalea Dinsmore, chief inspector at the polling location at Madison’s Pinney Library, said nearly 40% of registered voters in this east side Madison ward cast absentee ballots. Her team has been counting them as they’re delivered.
“The clerk’s office has done a really diligent job of making sure that every absentee counts, and so there’s been checks along the way that everything makes it to the polling location,” Dinsmore said.
Last year, law firm Law Forward sued the city and former clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl over the failure to count 193 absentee ballots in the 2024 presidential election.
Natalie Yahr rejoined Wisconsin Watch in March 2025 as a statewide pathways to success reporter, working in partnership with Open Campus. Her coverage explores the skills residents need to build thriving careers and how leaders can forge pathways to family-supporting work. Natalie first joined Wisconsin Watch in 2018 as an intern. She returned after spending more than five years at the Cap Times, where she covered Madison’s local economy, focusing on challenges and opportunities for workers, entrepreneurs and job seekers. Her work has also been published by WWNO-FM, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Journalism Ethics, Scalawag, Columbia Journalism Review and the New York Times. Before becoming a full-time journalist, she trained as a Spanish-English interpreter and coached adult students working to earn their high school equivalency diplomas. Natalie majored in ethics and economics at University of California-Davis and holds a master’s degree in journalism from UW-Madison.
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