MONROE - A flurry of paper hit the Green County clerk's office on Wednesday, the day after the 2012 presidential election. Precincts from across the county were required to drop off their ballots by 4 p.m.
And that was just the beginning of work for the office. About 2,000 registrations also came in, and they have to be entered individually into the state's online registration form. The city will enter another 578 registration forms.
Countywide, 19,366 people - about 69 percent of eligible-age voters - casted a ballot by the end of Tuesday, said Wendy Tschudy, Green County deputy clerk. That's about the state average that the Government Accountability Board had predicted. Some absentee ballots may still be coming in until Friday.
Wisconsin voters have to be registered before voting, and at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Tschudy said the county had 21,980 registered voters on file and she had many more registration cards to enter.
Tschudy and County Clerk Mike Doyle created a staging ground in the conference room adjoining the clerk's office. Piles of lists containing voter signatures had to be scanned into the state election system. Piles of registration cards also had to be manually entered - names, addresses and registration numbers.
And then there are the ballots, sealed with the infamous blue tape in large plastic bags and carefully sorted by townships and cities in sealed plastic containers. The City of Monroe ballots require five large bags. The ballots will eventually be secured and stored, and the containers stacked until the next election date.
The county clerk's office does the voter registration work for all the municipalities in the county, except the City of Monroe which does its own.
"Many of them just don't have the computer capabilities to handle the state's system," Doyle explained. "So we volunteered to do it for them."
In 2005-06, when the state put the electronic registration system into effect, Doyle's office had to enter the 14,000 registered voters in the county.
New registrations come in at every election, as new voters come of age and existing voters re-register because of a move, name change or inactivity.
In 2010, about 2,775 new voters registered in the spring, and 776 did so in November for the mid-term election.
In June of this year, 1,282 people registered to vote in the governor's recall election. Tschudy believes, without that recall election, those registration cards would have come this fall, making the current workload much heavier.
According to City Clerk Carol Stamm, 5,114 ballots were cast in Monroe, including absentee ballots. That is about an 84 percent turnout of registered voters and about 61 percent of all eligible voters in the city. There are 8,413 people of voting age in the city, not all are registered or vote, she added.
"But that was not a record," she added. The city recorded 5,172 voters in the 2004 presidential election.
The city processed 1,051 absentee ballots as of Tuesday night, compared to 1,001 in the 2008 presidential race.
In Lafayette County, about 8,000 of about 12,500 eligible voters turned in ballots Tuesday.
"That was a very good turn out," said County Clerk Linda Bawden. She will be entering about 200 registrations, which is "a lot," for the 18 municipalities she is responsible for. The county has about 28 precincts.
In the 2010 gubernatorial race, Green County had a total of 13,187 ballots cast, and Lafayette voters cast 5,594. In April of 2011, Green County voters turned in 10,969 ballots for a Wisconsin Justice of the Supreme Court race, and county- and city-wide officials.
Besides the hotly debated presidential race, Green County ballots this Tuesday included races for a U.S. senator, a U.S. congressman and three state assemblymen, as well as a number of county elected officials.
And that was just the beginning of work for the office. About 2,000 registrations also came in, and they have to be entered individually into the state's online registration form. The city will enter another 578 registration forms.
Countywide, 19,366 people - about 69 percent of eligible-age voters - casted a ballot by the end of Tuesday, said Wendy Tschudy, Green County deputy clerk. That's about the state average that the Government Accountability Board had predicted. Some absentee ballots may still be coming in until Friday.
Wisconsin voters have to be registered before voting, and at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Tschudy said the county had 21,980 registered voters on file and she had many more registration cards to enter.
Tschudy and County Clerk Mike Doyle created a staging ground in the conference room adjoining the clerk's office. Piles of lists containing voter signatures had to be scanned into the state election system. Piles of registration cards also had to be manually entered - names, addresses and registration numbers.
And then there are the ballots, sealed with the infamous blue tape in large plastic bags and carefully sorted by townships and cities in sealed plastic containers. The City of Monroe ballots require five large bags. The ballots will eventually be secured and stored, and the containers stacked until the next election date.
The county clerk's office does the voter registration work for all the municipalities in the county, except the City of Monroe which does its own.
"Many of them just don't have the computer capabilities to handle the state's system," Doyle explained. "So we volunteered to do it for them."
In 2005-06, when the state put the electronic registration system into effect, Doyle's office had to enter the 14,000 registered voters in the county.
New registrations come in at every election, as new voters come of age and existing voters re-register because of a move, name change or inactivity.
In 2010, about 2,775 new voters registered in the spring, and 776 did so in November for the mid-term election.
In June of this year, 1,282 people registered to vote in the governor's recall election. Tschudy believes, without that recall election, those registration cards would have come this fall, making the current workload much heavier.
According to City Clerk Carol Stamm, 5,114 ballots were cast in Monroe, including absentee ballots. That is about an 84 percent turnout of registered voters and about 61 percent of all eligible voters in the city. There are 8,413 people of voting age in the city, not all are registered or vote, she added.
"But that was not a record," she added. The city recorded 5,172 voters in the 2004 presidential election.
The city processed 1,051 absentee ballots as of Tuesday night, compared to 1,001 in the 2008 presidential race.
In Lafayette County, about 8,000 of about 12,500 eligible voters turned in ballots Tuesday.
"That was a very good turn out," said County Clerk Linda Bawden. She will be entering about 200 registrations, which is "a lot," for the 18 municipalities she is responsible for. The county has about 28 precincts.
In the 2010 gubernatorial race, Green County had a total of 13,187 ballots cast, and Lafayette voters cast 5,594. In April of 2011, Green County voters turned in 10,969 ballots for a Wisconsin Justice of the Supreme Court race, and county- and city-wide officials.
Besides the hotly debated presidential race, Green County ballots this Tuesday included races for a U.S. senator, a U.S. congressman and three state assemblymen, as well as a number of county elected officials.