Early voting has begun in Wisconsin, where voters are taking advantage of the service in record numbers.
In Merrill, early voting for the general election has kicked off to a busy start.
Lori Anderson-Malm is the city clerk of Merrill.
This is her first general election and she says you can feel the excited energy of voters.
“It's been extremely busy. We usually- a number of people, they already do the absentee ballots. But when it opened, on last Tuesday, it's- we've been swamped,” said Anderson-Malm.
Wisconsin election officials are reporting a nearly 40% increase in in-person early voting compared to 2020.
She said so far she’s processed over 1,300 ballots, mail-in and in-person ballots included.
In comparison, for the spring primaries, they had around 50 people come to vote in person early and processed around 300 mail in ballots.
“We usually have two or three districts per box in a regular election. This election, each district has their own box. And district seven, which is one of the largest districts, has two boxes because we had to split them,” she said.
While violent threats and rhetoric against election officials have ticked up around the state, Anderson-Malm says it hasn’t been a problem in Merrill.
As WXPR previously reported, clerks around the state were running into issues printing out labels for the outside of ballot envelopes when early voting first opened up.
“The state system, they weren't anticipating the amount of traffic, which I kind of find, how could you not? But anyway, the labels took three to five minutes to print, and so they've rebooted the system, and they've worked on it, and now it's running very well,” she explained.
Genie Springer says she thinks Trump has better thoughts and ideas than Harris.
“I think what's wrong is too many women are going to vote because a woman's running, I mean is going to run. And I think that would be wrong, because men don't vote for men because they're men, and I think they should look more at the issues than they do just because it's the woman,” she explained.
This Harris voter said he views Trump as having a big ego, which is why he won’t vote for him.
“Healthcare is probably one of the biggest issues that I'm here to vote for. I think everybody should have a right to healthcare. You know, no matter how much money they have, no matter what their wallet looks like. I think healthcare is a human right, so that's probably my sole biggest issue that I'm voting for,” he explained.
This voter tried the electronic voting machines for the first time and says he’ll be using them from now on.
“I can't make a mistake using the machine like that with the August referendums, I forgot to flip the ballot over so I never got to vote for the ballot initiatives in August, so that if I use the machine, I won't forget to vote for everything,” he said.
Early voting is available in Merrill until 5 o’clock Friday, November 1st.
The general election is on November 5th.
