Tuesday is election day and the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) is sharing important things to know about what will happen after polls close at 8 p.m.
Wisconsin's local election officials will be working late Tuesday night to deliver unofficial election results, WEC said. Unofficial results aren't known until the early hours of the next day after an election, and sometimes even later, WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe notes. Wolfe serves as the state's chief election official.
“When people make assumptions about vote counting based on what happens in other states or rumors, it can lead to misinformation," Wolfe notes.
Election officials do not "call" elections on Election Night. The state has never had a statewide system for reporting unofficial results on election night. WEC says there is also no central official website where results will be reported. Most unofficial results you see on election night and in the following days come from the media.
Winners are not official until results are certified, which happens on Dec. 1 under Wisconsin state law, WEC said.
For those who want detailed unofficial results directly from county clerks' offices, you can find the 72 county clerk websites on WEC's website.
Polls close at 8 p.m. unless there are still voters waiting in line past that time. Poll workers will continue processing absentee ballots that have not yet been counted at 8 p.m. until they are finished.
According to WEC, once all ballots have been processed and the polls officially close, poll workers will convene at the board of local canvassers, which is a public meeting. Voting equipment will print a results tape and it will be read aloud, announcing the vote totals for that polling place, WEC said.
Municipal clerks provide unofficial results to county clerks, which will then be posted on the county's website. Those results must be reported within two hours of the results being tabulated. County clerks must then post the results within two hours of receiving them.
"The results may come in differently for 38 cities, villages, and towns that count all their absentee ballots at a central facility," WEC said in a news release. "Several large cities including Milwaukee, Green Bay, Kenosha, Racine, and Wausau count their absentee ballots centrally."
For a full list of the municipalities that use central count,visit WEC's website.
Central count facilities are open on election day and after polls close for public observation while counting is happening.
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"At these facilities, election inspectors will review absentee ballot certificate envelopes for required information before recording these ballots in the poll book," WEC said. "Once a voter number is assigned to the voter, each envelope will be opened, the absentee ballot will be removed and flattened, and the ballot will then be processed on the voting equipment."
According to WEC, unofficial election night results from central count municipalities might not all arrive in the county clerk's office at the same time.
"The second step of the certification process is at the county level. Each county has a board of canvassers which must start meeting by 9 a.m. on Nov. 15 to begin certifying official results," WEC said. "These are also public meetings. The county board of canvassers is made up of the county clerk and two other people. County clerks are elected on a partisan basis, so one of the other two members must be from the opposite party of the county clerk. The deadline for counties to certify is November 22."
As for recounts, WEC says for the state level and national offices on the General Election ballot would be filed with the WEC.
"If the vote totals for such two-candidate contests are separated by 1% or less, the candidate trailing the leading candidate has the right to petition for a recount," WEC said. "Wisconsin does not have automatic recounts, even if the unofficial results are close. There is no cost to the petitioning candidate if the difference between the leading candidate and the petitioner is 0.25% or less. If the difference is more than 0.25%, the WEC will estimate the cost, which must be paid before the recount begins."
Further information on recounts is available on WEC's website.
The third step is WEC staff receive results from the counties before rechecking all the counties' numbers. There are also random post-election audits of voting equipment used to tally votes in 10% of the reporting units statewide, WEC said. A day after the election, 180 reporting units for audits will be randomly selected.
Municipal clerks in those jurisdictions must then hand count all the paper ballots twice to be sure the total matches the results from the voting equipment. Audits are also open to the public.
The Chair of the WEC must certify statewide results on Dec. 1.
Election resources