Madison set a new city record for early voting in a midterm election with a more than 400 percent increase from 2014 early voting turnout, Madison Mayor Paul Soglin announced at a press conference Monday.
Soglin said absentee ballots totaled just over 45,700, more than four times the 2014 total of slightly more than 15,000. In-person absentee ballots totaled more than 37,300, mostly due to the wide availability of early voting locations. In 2014, only 8,800 in-person absentee ballots were submitted.
Soglin expressed hope that these huge early voting turnouts would translate into a record-breaking percentage of registered voters turning out for the midterms. The current record stands at 69.5 percent, set in 2014. So far, 29 percent of registered voters have cast their ballots. Soglin said he hopes at least 73,000 more people head to the polls Tuesday. About 105,000 people voted on Election Day in Madison in 2014.
“This is a chance to participate and to be in the game and set a record,” Soglin said. “We’re shooting for 75 percent. We don’t want to be satisfied with an easy new record.”
City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl said the city will have about 2,800 people helping as poll workers, an increase of about 200 from the amount they had in 2016.
“We’re treating this election as if it were a presidential election,” she said. She also stressed the importance of the rapid response registration team, a group of poll workers available to move from location to location to help with long lines. The city’s goal is to make voting take less than 15 minutes, though Soglin said he wanted it to be five.
Soglin urged potential voters worried about long lines to go anyway, as the lines would be shorter than usual due to the large amount of early voters.
No matter what, Soglin said, Madison residents should get out and vote.
“Madison leads the country in recycling; we lead the country in terms of participation in the census,” he said. “We’d certainly like to lead the country in regards to voter participation.”
