Early voting in Wisconsin started with problems in New Berlin due to issues with the WisVote system, causing delays for many voters waiting to cast their ballots before Election Day. The surge in in-person absentee voters put a strain on the state's election infrastructure, according to a statement issued by the City Clerk of New Berlin and published on the city's official website.
The issues began on Tuesday when officials noticed slower-than-usual processing times within the WisVote system, a tool essential for facilitating voter registration and ballot tracking across Wisconsin. What typically took seconds stretched to minutes as the system struggled to keep pace with the demand. "By 12:45 PM, label printing times had extended to 10-15 minutes per label," the statement given by the New Berlin City Clerk revealed, as per the city's official website.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission confirmed the statewide nature of the problem, attributing the delays to "bandwidth limitations." To combat the bottleneck, the New Berlin election team executed Plan B, a tried-and-tested contingency strategy. This involved manually entering voter details into WisVote and having voters handwrite their information on the absentee envelopes. The system challenges and voters' patience culminated in wait times reaching up to 1 ½ hours at peak periods.
In response to the situation, infrastructure improvements were promptly proposed. The Elections Commission aims to bolster system performance with additional server enhancements. "To address this, they are working with their partner state agency to install additional RAM and CPU on their servers, which they believe will enhance system performance," the City Clerk's statement assured, according to the city's official website.
Despite the hurdles faced on the first day of In-Person Absentee Voting, the New Berlin election officials flow of absentee voters effectively, processing over 1,000 applications. The City Clerk extended gratitude to both the community for its understanding and the election team for its resilience and transparency. Voters are encouraged to continue participating in the absentee voting process, which runs through November 1. And as of the latest update, the WisVote system is back to running without issues.
