Today is the start of early voting, with a bevy of local and state candidates and referenda on the ballot.
And as he previewed his ballot to prepare, one WORT volunteer asked us – why does his ballot look different than expected? I spoke with Jonah Chester who lives on the far west side of Madison.
“I live in Middleton. I have a Middleton address. It says Middleton on my address. But for some reason my ballot shows both Middleton school board candidates and the Madison mayoral race and that I’d be represented by a Madison alderperson” said Jonah.
Chester said he was perplexed by the mix of candidates.
“So I get to vote in the Madison mayoral race and get to vote in the Madison Alderperson District Nine race. But what’s weird is that I also get to vote in three different Middleton Cross Plains area school district races which is very odd” said Jonah. (18 sec.)
Election officials say… that’s actually normal. Depending on where you live, you might see a mix of school districts and other local races represented. Scott McDonell is the Dane County Clerk.
“So for the Spring, we have over two-hundred different ballot styles because of Aldermanic districts not matching up with school districts. County board and city council don’t match up” said McDonell.
McDonell adds that his office takes proper measures to sort the variety of ballots for each voter for a clear election process. For local clerks, local elections in the spring tend to be more complicated than elections in the fall.
“Within the city of Madison there’s people who go to Windsor, they go to DeForest, they go to Middleton Cross Plains so there are Madison wards for example that go to different school districts and in some townships like the town of Cottage Grove, there will be four different school districts in that township will the residents will go. And that becomes a difficult task for my office to code is to code that election process carefully and make sure people aren’t in the wrong sort of bucket to what your ballot should look like” said McDonell.
McDonnell says these political boundaries evolve over time. And that’s usually due to annexation, when a city incorporates new properties into its city limits.
“So you’ll have different styles and that’s really common and a lot of that’s driven by annexation. So with Madison you’ll see Madison annex a farmfield and then we gotta change even though there’s nobody in there. They will eventually, right? You know and the system to accommodate that, that’s now gonna be a city alder where you vote there. Maybe there’s one farmhouse, then now they’re going to go from voting in the town of Middletown to the city of Madison” said McDonell.
Early in-person voting kicked off today, and will wrap up on Sunday, April 2. You can register to vote at your early voting location until March 31. And if you choose to vote on Election Day, in exactly two weeks on April 4th, you can register at the polls then.
In the meantime, you can preview your ballot at MyVote Wisconsin. And if you have a question about your ballot, reach out to your local clerk.