OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
There will be substantially fewer ballot drop boxes in Wisconsin during the current election cycle than there were during 2020, according to a Thursday report.
Wisconsin only has 78 drop boxes in use throughout the state, a decrease from the 500 that were available during the 2020 presidential election, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission.
The drop boxes are registered with the state, as noted by Meagan Wolfe, administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission. The total includes 14 in Milwaukee, 14 in Madison, and seven in Racine, with a complete list available on the state’s election website.
The topic of drop boxes has gained attention this election cycle following a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that permitted their use but did not mandate it. Previously, the court had blocked the use of ballot drop boxes after the 2020 presidential election.
“Voters have a lot of choices to make, and I think that we have a lot of really great, secure options here in the state of Wisconsin,” Wolfe said Wednesday.
As of Wednesday, Wisconsin has seen 267,524 absentee ballots returned out of the 564,095 that have been mailed out and 573,750 that have been requested.
In comparison, at the same point in 2020, 700,000 absentee ballots had been returned, with 1.3 million requests made. Ultimately, 2 million voters in the state cast absentee ballots during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Beginning on October 22, voters will have the opportunity to cast an in-person absentee ballot at clerk’s offices in municipalities, Just the News reported.
A new poll released a week ago from The Wall Street Journal showed that former President Donald Trump and his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, are neck and neck in national polling but in crucial swings states, including what has become known as “the blue wall,” the numbers are a catastrophe for Democrats.
It also included the one Sun Belt stronghold for Democrats, Nevada, which the poll said is slipping away from them. It showed the former president with a lead of 47 percent to 42 percent, and the other six swing states are, for all intents and purposes, tied.
Harris, the poll found, holds an edge of one or two points in Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia, and the former president has a lead of one point in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
“The poll’s margin of error for each state was plus or minus 5 percentage points. In each of the swing states, 600 registered voters were surveyed between Sept. 28 and Oct. 8, and the poll included third-party candidates in states where they will be on the ballot,” Politico reported.
“Across all the swing-state voters surveyed, Trump leads Harris 46 percent to 45 percent. Ninety-three percent of both Democrats and Republicans polled said they would vote for their party’s nominee. And independent voters were split evenly between the two, with 40 percent for Harris and 39 percent for Trump, further emphasizing the closeness of the race and its partisan divide,” it said.
Meanwhile, Quinnipiac University’s most recent poll shows Trump leading in Michigan 50 to 47 percent and Wisconsin 48 to 46 percent. He has closed the difference in Pennsylvania with Harris, who leads the Keystone State 49 to 46 percent.
Harris was winning the race in Michigan last month, 50 to 45 percent; in Wisconsin, 48 to 47 percent.
Harris had also been ahead in Pennsylvania, with 51 to 45 percent, but Trump has halved that gap in Quinnipiac’s survey.
While Harris does best when polled on abortion policy, Trump does best on immigration, the economy, and the Middle East conflict, according to Blue Wall voters.
Quinnipiac just dropped a bomb on the Presidential polling world:
Michigan
🔴 Trump: 50%
🔵 Harris: 47%Wisconsin
🔴 Trump: 48%
🔵 Harris: 46%Pennsylvania
🔴 Trump: 46%
🔵 Harris: 49%What are your thoughts?
— Dustin Grage (@GrageDustin) October 9, 2024
Quinnipiac carried out polling among probable voters from October 3rd to the 7th.
The margin of error for the sample was +/- 2.6 percentage points for 1,412 Pennsylvania voters, +/- 3.1 percentage points for 1,007 Michigan voters, and +/- 3.0 percentage points for 1,073 Wisconsin voters.
