Wisconsin voters have requested 368,335 absentee ballots for Tuesday’s primary, about 40 percent of what they sought ahead of the August 2020 election.
The Elections Commission’s update from yesterday shows 363,399 of the requested ballots had been sent with 233,501 returned.
Local clerks upload information into the system, and there’s often a lag in the number of ballots requested, mailed and returned. That means the numbers could climb higher through Tuesday’s primary.
Voters who asked for absentee ballots must return them by 8 p.m. Tuesday, when the polls close.
The use of absentee ballots peaked in November 2020 as voters cast more than 2 million, including nearly 1.4 million by mail, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their use has trailed off steadily since then.
There were 321,659 requested for the April election, accounting for 32.8 percent of the 979,217 votes overall that were cast.
For the April 2020 election, there were 908,444 absentee ballots requested, accounting for about 56 percent of the 1.6 million cast.
See Thursday’s update:
https://elections.wi.gov/statistics-data/absentee-statistics
