“Smooth sailing”

Absentee ballots galore, but Madison poll workers to match

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Peter Gascowne has worked the polls a half dozen times over the last decade but this year he’s a “rover,” a new role for him and the city of Madison.

“I circulate between five of the wards [for District 13] to keep an eye on the lines, to help out with things like supplies if anything is needed,” says Gascowne, as he sits in his car across from Trinity United Methodist Church on Vilas Avenue, where about 20 are waiting for the doors to open at 7 a.m.

Public information officer Hannah Mohelnitzky confirms that rovers are new this year for the city. 

“We created the position because we have the luxury of having so many poll workers for this election,” she says. Each roving official is assigned to an aldermanic district, she adds, so there are 17 in all. “They are keeping an eye on voter lines, polling place signage, and activity around each polling location.”

Having enough poll workers was a happy turn of events for city officials who were worried earlier this year that people would stay home because of concern over the coronavirus. 

But Madison, as well as other many cities around the state, would go on to attract a surplus of workers (6,000 were recruited this year, compared to 3,000 in 2016). John Perkins, the chief inspector at the Trinity voting location, says the city sent close to double the number of workers who usually staff a presidential election; 25 or so instead of 15. “It’s encouraging,” he says. “I’m happy the city didn’t have a shortage, especially since there were concerns about the elderly population who didn’t want to work it.” 

The extra staff meant poll workers at Trinity could start opening absentee ballots by 7:15 a.m. Perkins says. Some 700 absentee ballots were already checked and fed through the tabulator before noon. About 215 people had voted in person. According to the city clerk’s office, there are 1,401 registered voters in the ward. 

Voter Craig Rypstat had an absentee ballot at home but in the end decided to vote in person on Election Day. “I really wanted to make sure my vote got counted,” he says. Rypstat says he is concerned about legal challenges to drop-off boxes and other efforts related to early voting. “I would like my vote for Joe Biden to be on the record so if there is scrubbing done in the court system at least my vote will be counted.” 

Rypstat says today’s election is different from past ones. “It just feels like there is more gravity.” It also feels like the end of some sort of marathon, he adds. “Whatever the will of the nation is it will be on record. It will not be in question.”

Over on the north side of the city, people are queued up at three polling locations — Lakeview Lutheran Church, Lindbergh Elementary School and Lakeview Library — before the polls open. But within 45 minutes or so, the lines have disappeared. A little less steady traffic is over at Sherman Avenue United Methodist Church; there, just 20 people vote before 8 a.m. 

Lakeview Lutheran is still buzzing just before 2 p.m. Pranee Sheskey, chief inspector for wards 33 and 34, says the day has been going well but it is “extremely busy. Oh my gosh, it’s crazy.”

Sheskey says she has been surprised by the number of people voting in person today, with curbside service a popular option and quite a few absentee ballots also being turned in at the polling place. “This is the first time we have had this many people.”

Many of the poll workers this year are new recruits — 38 of 53 total — and it’s a lot of information for them to absorb. “The [city’s] webinar doesn’t help as much with training,” says Sheskey. “Hands-on experience is better. But everyone has been a quick learner.”

At Mendota School around 10:30 a.m., it is “smooth sailing,” says an election worker directing voters at the door. “It’s going great,” confirms chief inspector Pat Butler, who has been volunteering at the polls “since Jimmy Carter was president.”

“This ward wants to vote in person,” says Butler of the diverse population that votes at the north side elementary school. “It’s a pride thing for many,” she says of African Americans and immigrants who had to fight for the right to vote. “They want to put that ballot in the box themselves.”

At Olbrich Gardens at 12:30 p.m., there are more poll workers than voters, and the voting cubicles are mostly empty.

Chief inspector Meg Hamel says that of the 2,662 people who were registered to vote in the ward (40) as of Nov. 1, somewhere around 1,900 or 75 percent had already voted early or absentee. Hamel expects another two satchels of absentee ballots to be delivered yet today to Olbrich. “We’re on pace with processing,” says Hamel. “We’ve already done three of the four original boxes, taking an hour and 20 minutes to complete each box.” 

Hamel says they will “easily” complete the processing of their absentee ballots today.

This is Hamel’s first election as chief inspector at Olbrich although she has spent about six years as chief inspector in training, a position a volunteer can hold for as many elections as he or she wants before taking on the chief role. Hamel says the clerk’s office provides excellent training and says she has “zero concerns” about the voting today. “It’s been a routine election. All we do at polling places is follow procedure. There is nothing where we have to guess.”

Hamel, who for years was the director of the Wisconsin Film Festival, calls Election Day “the fun time. It’s show time. What we’ve been training and planning for, we finally get to do it.” Hamel does, in fact, liken Election Day itself to the film festival: “Once it starts, that’s the easy part.”

The calm is a little unusual for Olbrich on Election Day. “Usually, there’s more activity, the burbling of voices, pans of brownies being passed around,” Hamel says. “But this is as much as a rush as we have seen today,” she says of the eight voters in line or in the process of voting.

Hamel says Olbrich has 60 poll workers, two times the number of poll workers they usually have on hand; 22 are poll workers for the first time.

The East Madison Community Center experiences a sudden rush of voters at 1 p.m., though it was busy all day and “we had 25 to 30 people lined up out the door this morning,” says poll worker Lia Coleman. Coleman is encouraged that “there have been a lot of people voting for the first time, or for the first time in 40 years.” 

There was only one voter early in the day who refused to wear a mask, according to a poll worker who was asked by a voter if there had been any problems on this front. “He just didn’t want to,” the poll worker says, “so I just escorted him to the front of the line.”

As of early afternoon, voting at all seven campus polling locations was going smoothly, according to a UW-Madison news release, which noted that students had taken advantage of early voting opportunities on campus: “A total of 7,268 people cast early ballots on campus Oct. 20-30. That is 28 percent of the 26,223 in-person absentee ballots cast in Madison.”

The Hillel at University of Wisconsin is bustling with students around 1 p.m., but most are poll workers. The campus ward’s election inspector, David Diamondstone, says it’s the first time many have volunteered to work at the polls. He says the polling place usually registers about 700-1,000 voters because many students move into the area in late August. But not this year.

“It’s been steady and we’ve been busy,” says Diamondstone. “But we have way more absentee ballots than voters showing up to vote today.” 

Out of 2,500 registered voters, 1,300 have already voted absentee. 

Over at the Wisconsin Masonic Center, voters have a lot of room to distance. Normally this downtown ward votes at the teeny Gates of Heaven at James Madison Park. 

“Gates of Heaven is too small for social distancing so they moved us over here,” says election inspector Deana Sedlmayr, who adds that two-thirds of registered voters cast absentee ballots at the polling place. “We received 1,400 absentee ballots. We have 2,700 registered voters in this ward. So those are being processed. We've also had 50 people register at the polls today.” 

Eric Patterson, the election inspector at the Madison Municipal Building, says it's been going “very smoothly” at his polling place. He has plenty of help, too.

“We have too many poll workers. It’s great,” says Patterson, who has been an election inspector for seven years. “Many, many more absentees. At least two-thirds, likely more. In the pollbook, there are very few spaces that haven’t been signed.” 

At the polling station at Village on Park around 3 p.m. a DJ is spinning music outside on the terrace while J.D’s Soul Food takeout truck is parked at the curb. Similar #JoyAtThePolls events were staged at six other polling locations in the area, says Mahnker Dahnweih, director of community power building for Freedom Inc. The group also provided election defenders at polling locations to help address any attempts to intimidate voters or prevent them from voting. 

“We know that we are in a historic moment right now,” says Dahnweih. “This election is different from any other election that we have witnessed in our lifetime. For the first time we have a sitting president who has not committed verbally to transitioning power peacefully if he loses. For the first time ever we have a sitting president who has, on national television, spoken directly to white supremacists and…said to stand back and stand by. So we are in unprecedented historic times.”

Dahnweih says there is often “white backlash” when Black people build power and resist and her group is preparing for that. But it’s also important to express one’s right to participate in the electoral process and, she adds, “to have joy.”

“Because what are we really fighting for if we can’t be joyful and if we can’t celebrate together as a community?” asks Dahnweih. “So that’s where #JoyAtThePolls came from. We wanted to create a space where folks in Madison could be unapologetically Black and come share food and have those spaces together.”

Inside the polling place, chief inspector Elaine Staley says the day has been “crazy.” “We have five times the number of absentee ballots we might get over time and have had good same-day turnout” as well. She says poll workers are nearly done with processing the some 475 absentee ballots already received; at that point about 200 people had voted in person. The ward has 911 registered voters. The turnout, says Staley, “is incredible compared to 2016.” 

Maria Herrera brought her sons Oscar, 18, and Enrique, 20, who were voting for the first time. She opted for in-person voting despite the pandemic. “I just feel it’s most secure,” she says.

She says it was important to vote this year, with all the “ruckus going on.” She says there is so much division in the country, and the president is bringing too much chaos. “Let’s give someone else a try,” she says. 

Those who don’t vote, she adds, lose their right to complain. “You really can’t say anything.”