Author: Wisconsin Watch

Despite recent significant upgrades, questions remain about the effectiveness of Wisconsin’s post-election audits and the security of some voting machines. Long-time Wisconsin resident and election reformer Jim Mueller said when he was a municipal clerk two decades ago, elections were not a stressful part of small town administration. And, “in my mother’s age, anybody that learned how to count by grade five could be a poll worker,” he said. His mother worked the polls in the town of Elcho, Wisconsin. In 1999, when Mueller himself became clerk of the town of Middleton near Madison, he expected elections to be...

Schools in Wisconsin have spent millions of dollars on hotspots to help students with poor internet service learn online as the coronavirus pandemic grinds on. The 40-acre farmette where the Hellenbrand family lives in south-central Wisconsin is an eclectic mix of people and animals. Amy Jo Hellenbrand and her husband raise corn, soybeans, wheat, heifers, chickens, goats and bunnies on their land just outside the village of Dane, about 20 miles north of Madison. “We do have a little petting zoo,” she said with a chuckle. They also raise four children — ages 11, 9, 8 and 5 —...

The U.S. Postal Service is not meeting goals for on-time mail delivery, a worrying sign as millions of Americans are expected to vote by mail in November. Based on its own performance measures — and the loss of hundreds of Wisconsin ballots on their way to voters this summer — the U.S. Postal Service has its work cut out for it before Election Day. Among the 13 postal districts serving key presidential battleground states, four failed to meet any on-time service goals handling first-class mail between April 1 and June 30, and six districts achieved only one. The laggards...