Wisconsin’s election laws are likely about to change now that Democrats have control from state government. Here’s what the top Dems on elections have to say about that, and what clerks/Republicans’ message to the new majority is: www.votebeat.org/wisconsin/20...

How Wisconsin Democrats want to transform election law after flipping the legislature

Top priorities include more election funding and letting clerks process ballots the Monday before an election.

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Milwaukee's central count had some notable hiccups on Election Day. But toward the end of the night, as GOP losses became clear, many of the city's biggest critics and most frequent observers appeared not to care anymore about the operation and left the facility. www.votebeat.org/wisconsin/20...

As Milwaukee struggles to run a smooth election, experts wonder how many errors are too many

Republicans claim Milwaukee’s elections are not secure. A series of small errors in the 2026 election may not help the city’s reputation.

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Clerks’ perennial wish: high turnout, wide margins. They got that in Wisconsin. Concession speeches abound. If there are disputes in the closer races, I’m not seeing them yet.

Milwaukee is beginning to extract absentee election results from the city’s tabulators. Not a lot of people here. People seem to worry a lot less about the city’s most scrutinized process when critical election results no longer depend on Milwaukee’s results.

A Whitewater polling location ran out of ballots for some time today, Jefferson Co clerk told me. 2-ish hours transpired btwn the city saying they were low on paper/them getting more. Not sure how long they were out, but during that time voters only had access to ExpressVote

Potential issue I'm monitoring in Milwaukee: Ballot processing teams didn't write down poll list numbers on 242 ballots -- a requirement under state law for central count municipalities. Unclear whether those ballots have been segregated or whether they'll be challenged.

Notably, Milwaukee election chief Paulina Gutierrez has been at central count all day so far. That wasn't the case in August, when city officials extracted the wrong files from tabulators at the end of the night.

Milwaukee's central count is off to a smooth start, besides a brief hiccup involving a tabulator that initially wasn't sealed. Officials noticed the issue, sealed the tabulator, and ran a zero report showing that no ballots had been run through the machine.

Something special to welcome Milwaukee central county workers, media and observers today:

Folks! Votebeat has a live blog this Election Day. I’ll be posted up at Milwaukee’s central count, visiting a couple polling places throughout the day. Follow here: www.votebeat.org/national/202...

Minute-by-minute updates on the 2026 election

It’s Election Day, and Votebeat is live-blogging any problems that crop up at the polls.

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If you want to look at which areas of Wisconsin have leaned into early in-person voting the most, you'd have to look outstate. Rural voters have been likeliest to change how they vote. That's as @propublica.org finds rural America most susceptible to mail delays. www.votebeat.org/wisconsin/20...

Rural Wisconsin is behind the state's shift in early voting

All of the counties that have doubled their early in-person votes from this point in 2022 are in rural parts of the state.

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Quick hit story on how the gubernatorial candidates differ on all things elections -- except for one key thing in common www.votebeat.org/wisconsin/20...

Wisconsin’s governor candidates diverge on how the state should run elections. Here’s where they stand.

One candidate backed Wisconsin’s strict voter ID laws. The other likened them to “what was going on in Jim Crow days.”

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After a slow start, there are some signs that absentee voting this election may surpass that of '22 midterms. Eight days out from election: 200k early votes, 441k total absentees returned as of this AM 127k early votes, 445k in '22

As of earlier today, WI voters had cast more than 103,000 in-person early ballots. That’s compared with 65,000 in-person early votes at this time in the November 2022 midterm election.

WEC told clerks that federal agents from the FBI and ICE can be legitimate election observers at the polls in some cases. Dane County took issue with that, telling WEC it vehemently disagrees with the agency's interpretation of federal law. More on that dispute here www.votebeat.org/wisconsin/20...

Can unarmed ICE agents watch voting? In Wisconsin that depends who you ask.

A dispute between the state’s second-largest county and its election agency highlights different approaches to the prospect of federal intervention at the polls.

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In Wisconsin, voters cast early in-person ballots as distrust in the mail grows www.votebeat.org/wisconsin/20...

Here’s why Wisconsin voters are opting out of the mail and into early in-person voting

Voters from around the Milwaukee metro area told Votebeat that in-person absentee voting is a simple way to avoid a mail system that they say has become risky.

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For years, cybersecurity experts have been telling election officials to use government email and web domains. But in Wisconsin, a third of clerks -- all in small towns -- still use emails like Hotmail and Gmail. WEC is driving the shift to .gov but it's a heavy lift

Remember all the conspiracy theories about Milwaukee's August 11 election error? We had three experts look at the tabulator audit logs Milwaukee released after the election and the consensus is the same: Nothing was askew. Read more: www.votebeat.org/wisconsin/20...

Milwaukee election audit logs show no evidence of fraud, experts say

Experts say the logs confirm what had been clear from the start: A human error delayed results in the August primary but there was no tampering.

votebeat.org

NEW: Here's my full report on what went wrong in Milwaukee last night, and how it overshadowed city plans to show the public how it was more efficiently and transparently processing absentee ballots on Election Day. Link: www.votebeat.org/wisconsin/20...

Inside the long wait for Milwaukee’s election results

Milwaukee was on pace to report election results relatively quickly — but an error delayed them until after 1 a.m.

votebeat.org

Milwaukee officials are done counting absentees. They got up to around 28k, and hope to report them by 10:30 p.m. That would be a relatively early night for the state's biggest Election Day operation.

Hello from Milwaukee’s central count, the largest Election Day operation in the state. I’ll be here all day, covering the officials processing around 25k ballots today. Let me know if you have any questions/concerns!

What to expect when you're expecting election results in Wisconsin www.votebeat.org/wisconsin/20...

A big election is coming up in Wisconsin. Here’s when to expect results.

Municipalities like Milwaukee sometimes take until the wee hours of Wednesday to report election results. Here’s why.

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One of Votebeat's very best resources is one that all election reporters can use. This year @votebeat.org is relaunching its experts desk, a Slack channel with hundreds of reporters and election experts, where you can experts your election questions and get (many) correct answers

Exclusive new details on who the FBI is talking to in Wisconsin about the 2020 election, from Dion Nissenbaum and @alexandershur.bsky.social on @votebeat.org today. www.votebeat.org/national/202...

The Trump administration is investigating the 2020 election. It may be laying the groundwork for 2026.

Claims of mass voter fraud have been debunked again and again, but the Trump administration is still relitigating the 2020 election.

votebeat.org

The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin recently sued to require every clerk to give voters an opportunity to fix mistakes on their absentee envelopes Currently clerks can choose whether to reach out to affected voters. Here's what clerks/experts say about the suit www.votebeat.org/wisconsin/20...

‘Fundamentally unfair’: Lawsuit alleges voters are being treated differently across Wisconsin

Right now, some Wisconsin clerks let voters fix mistakes with their absentee ballots, and others don’t. A new lawsuit seeks to impose a uniform standard.

votebeat.org

23 late-arriving Madison absentee ballots must be counted, judge rules www.votebeat.org/wisconsin/20...

Judge orders Madison to count 23 rejected absentee ballots in state Supreme Court race

A judge ruled that 23 late-arriving Madison absentee ballots must be counted after voters argued they were being disenfranchised due to election officials’ errors.

votebeat.org

NEW: A Votebeat review found that Mequon Clerk Caroline Fochs has applied an unusually strict standard in rejecting ballots -- and misapplied her stated standard in her rejection of at least 10 ballots since 2024. WEC is meeting about Mequon as we speak. www.votebeat.org/wisconsin/20...

Mequon clerk appears to have rejected ballots that met even her own strict standard, Votebeat review finds

Mequon’s clerk rejected ballots from places like Fox Point — even though those municipalities are uniquely named and should have met her own standard.

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A municipal clerk in Ozaukee County has an unusually strict standard to decide whether witness addresses are valid. In this past election, the Mequon clerk's standard led to five ballot rejections -- two of which may have been due to bad data on her part. www.votebeat.org/wisconsin/20...

Flexible rule for Wisconsin absentee ballots leads to rejected votes, possible legal action

The Mequon fight centers on who can reject ballots — and who gets the final say.

votebeat.org

🧵Post-election Old Fashioneds? Running elections from a beef farm? A county that in this time of unprecedented turnover has come up with a collaborative and helpful system for training new clerks? All that and more in my latest dispatch, from all over Rock County: www.votebeat.org/wisconsin/20...

Running an election is harder than ever. This Wisconsin county makes it easier on new clerks.

As Wisconsin wrestles with unprecedented clerk turnover, the county is taking an all-hands-on-deck approach to keep new clerks in the field.

votebeat.org

We've obtained emails between the top election official in Maricopa County, AZ, and the Department of Justice, raising questions about whether he's helping their investigation of the county's elections. www.votebeat.org/arizona/2026...