Wisconsin Pushes USPS To Fix Absentee Mail Before Next Elections

A worker sorts through absentee ballots Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020, at Milwaukee’s Central Count facility. Angela Major/WPR

The Wisconsin Elections Commission is asking the U.S. Postal Service for “extraordinary measures” to speed up deliveries of absentee ballots after two-thirds of clerks reported problems during the April 7 election.

The delays were so bad that one longtime clerk called it “the worst ever” in her nearly three decades of handling elections.

The letter sent Thursday to U.S. Postmaster General David Steiner outlines concerns about “mail delays that threaten the ability of our citizens to exercise their right to vote,” noting that military and overseas Wisconsin voters are disproportionately affected.

“In a subsequent survey of Wisconsin local election officials, two-thirds of clerks reported problems with the mail,” the commission’s letter stated. “More than half of the clerks reported receiving complaints and concerns from their voters. And a quarter of the clerks reported receiving more late ballots than is typical for an election.”

The letter asks Steiner to revisit “extraordinary measures” used by the postal service in previous elections to speed delivery of absentee ballots for Wisconsin’s upcoming August primary, November general election, February spring primary and April Supreme Court election.

The online survey referenced by the commission was conducted following the April 7 election. It garnered 906 responses from municipal, town, village and county clerks across the state.

Of the respondents, 67 percent reported observing problems with the mail. When asked about differences in the number of ballots arriving by mail this time compared to the April 2025 election, 39 percent of respondents reported seeing similar numbers, while 25 percent said they received more late ballots.

The survey results include pages of anonymous written responses and the report only groups them by county. A clerk in Waukesha County stated, “We had a lot of absentee ballots turned into us in person because the voters don’t trust the USPS to get it back in time or even at all.”

Fond du Lac County clerk: More than 100 ballots arrived late in April

In an interview with WPR, Fond du Lac County Clerk Lisa Freiberg said her office saw a few late ballots after the 2024 presidential election, but more than 100 absentee ballots were tossed this spring because they were delivered after April 7.

“April was the worst ever in my years of being part of elections, the 28 years I’ve been part of elections with the county clerk for Fond du Lac County,” Freiberg said. “The amount of ballots that came in after the April 7 election day was astounding. That’s something I’ve never seen before. A lot of those ballots were postmarked in March, even mid-March, and were not returned to the municipal clerks’ box until after that election.”

Freiberg said she doesn’t want to “cut down” postal service employees who work hard, “but there is definitely something that is going on, whether it’s a lack of employees or processing, or whatever.” She said concerns about the mail have pushed some municipal clerks in her county to consider installing absentee ballot drop boxes.

“I know a couple of them have been looking into putting in some kind of secured box for people to put that absentee ballot in, and inside their town halls or whatever, trying to look at alternative things, offering more in person,” said Freiberg.

Freiberg said if just one ballot is delivered after Election Day, “it makes me very sad that that person’s ballot did not get counted.”

“And then, when it comes through that it was postmarked two to three weeks before the election, that’s even more frustrating in my world,” said Freiberg.

Wisconsin Elections Commission asks postal service to speed up deliveries of absentee ballots was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.