With the number of mail-in ballots submitted this year expected to amount to more than double those sent in 2016, and with elections offices and voting locations especially understaffed—all due to the COVID-19 pandemic—it’s highly probable that we won’t know for certain whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden has won the election until several days after ballots are due.

Absentee ballots will keep flowing in after Election Day. Almost one-third of the United States merely require mail-in ballots to be postmarked, rather than received, by Election Day, and a handful more require postmarks from just one day prior to Election Day.

This year up to 80 million Americans will be voting by mail, and USPS slowdowns are making it very possible that even ballots postmarked and sent back well in advance won’t be counted until Nov. 3 or later.

Some states can’t start processing ballots until Election Day. Many states are expecting record-setting numbers of absentee ballots this year, so if poll workers can’t start processing them as they flood in, there will inevitably be a huge backlog of mailed ballots that will take several days after Nov. 3 to tally.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, in about 20 percent of states, including Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, mailed ballots cannot begin to be processed until Election Day, and in some cases not until the physical polls have closed. The majority of states aren’t allowed to actually begin tabulating mailed-in votes until Election Day, even if they can start the processing and verification process well in advance.

According to the University of Florida’s U.S. Elections Project, with only about one week left to go until Election Day, more than 61 million Americans have already cast their ballots via mail-in or early voting, with registered Democrats nearly doubling Republicans.

As these numbers only continue to grow, there will surely be plenty of headlines touting what appears to be an early lead for Joe Biden. Keep in mind there is a well-documented party divide when it comes to early voting, with Trump supporters expressing a significantly higher preference for in-person voting and more distrust in mail-in voting than Biden supporters, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll. That means the election will probably seem to be swinging back and forth between the two candidates for a while before a winner is announced—first leaning toward Biden with early voting numbers, then toward Trump with the first in-person numbers, and then the process goes crazy as in-person polls close and mailed votes are officially tabulated.

One internet news source reports the outcome could take as many as 36 days after Election Day to determine.

Here in Franklin where I live there has been an increase in registered voters of 2,492 between August 19 (the day after the August Partisan Primary and October 25. In-person absentee voting started last Tuesday, October 20, 2020, in Franklin. In a four-day period 2,467 voters appeared in person.  In addition to the in-person voters, Franklin has processed applications of 11,215 voters who requested to have their ballots mailed to them, of which 2,401 have not yet been returned.  In-person absentee voting will continue through Friday, October 30, from 8:30 am to 5:00 pm, and voters can still request that an absentee ballot be mailed to them through Thursday, October 29 with indefinitely confined voters and military voters allowed to request they be mailed through October 30.

It would seem to make sense that Franklin and other areas of the country should be allowed to begin counting votes NOW.

Mail in ballots are problematic.  The process essentially works like this. A clerk takes an envelope from a bin. It’s checked to see if it was signed by the voter, if it was witnessed, and if the witness signed and gave his/her address. The voter is checked against a list for prior vote(s).A barcode on the envelope is checked. Then the ballot is run into the machine. This takes about three (3) minutes a ballot. That’s a lot of time depending on how many machines you’ve got.

Consider this.  If the clerks could merely put the ballot into a poll machine when it came in (or a voter who was voting absentee in person shoved it in like they usually want to do, the city would ultimately be far ahead of the game.

It’s rare I concur with a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial, but I do this time. The newspaper writes:

Wisconsin should let clerks get a head start on counting at least some absentee ballots, a change in the law that clerks from both parties have wanted for years.

It makes sense to let clerks start counting early. The vast majority of ballots are likely to be received by Election Day, and it would be in the best interest of our democracy to have the most complete results possible on election night, which is what people have come to expect.

Wisconsin’s clerks have pushed for a change in state law that would allow them to open and place ballots into tabulator machines as they arrive in the mail. The tally would not be counted or disclosed until Election Day. Wisconsin law now requires them to wait until Election Day to begin counting.

Wisconsin legislators have debated the issue but haven’t acted. Long delays in counting ballots can fuel partisan emotions, give the combatants an excuse to challenge the results, and cause voters to question them.

We need to give clerks of both parties what they are asking for. They run our elections; let’s listen to them. Allow them to count ballots early.

Back in late August I called upon recall expert Orville Seymer, a Franklin resident, to lend his insight into the launching of the recalls against Gov. Tony Evers and Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes.  Seymer meticulously outlined why the timing of petition drives was highly questionable.

Now that the recalls didn’t work out Seymer is back with analysis of what went wrong. The answer is a lot.

Why Did the Evers/Barnes Recall Fail? (exclusive)
By Orville Seymer

There are many reasons why the Evers/Barnes Recall effort failed but the main reason is lack of organization.

The Recall group apparently on a whim decided to file a Recall of the Governor and Lt. Gov. Did they deserve to be Recalled? Most people would agree that the Evers/Barnes administration is possibly the most incompetent administration in Wisconsin history, so clearly they deserved to be removed from office.

The Evers/Barnes administration is exactly what the Recall provision was designed for. It is very important to understand exactly how difficult it is to gather nearly 750,000 signatures. This is where the organizers fell down and that was just their first mistake.

It is always best to get organized before actually filing the actual Recall effort. That means forming an “Exploratory Political Action Committee (PAC) which allows the group to raise some money and spend some money and get volunteers in place before the 60 day clock starts ticking. This was the second mistake.

The Recall of a Governor is a very big story, yet I’m not aware of any press releases from the Recall group to announce any type of signature gathering efforts. In my experience the media wants to cover a big story such as a Recall of the Governor. This was their third mistake.

Nearly everything the Governor and Lt. Governor do on a daily basis is subject to the Wis. Open Records laws, it is incredible what turns up in simple Open Records Requests, and in Evers’ case, he has a history of not complying with simple Open Records Requests. That in itself is a Press Release and a major media event. This was their fourth mistake and a major one at that.

Petition Security is vitally important in any Recall effort. According to the Recall Evers FaceBook page, someone was acting as a “mole” and apparently infiltrated the petition vetting process and surprise, apparently a large number of petitions disappeared. This was their fifth mistake and again, a major mistake.

A few other simple mistakes. If they would have waited a week and a half to file the Recall way back in August, they could have included the Nov. 3rd election within the 60 day time frame for gathering the signatures. This would have allowed petitioners to collect signatures at the polls on election day. Sixth mistake.

They could have also timed the original filing so that the last day or 60th day would fall on a Sat. This would have allowed an extra day to gather signatures over the final weekend and could have possibly put them over the top if needed. Seventh mistake.

Again according to their Face Book post, a large number of people did not complete the “Circulator Certification” at the bottom of every Recall petition. So they did not have a team of people sending these petitions back where they came from to complete this important step. Without the “Circulator Certification” all the names on the petition are invalid. Eighth mistake.

As I have said before at the beginning of the Recall effort, I offered my knowledge and expertise which would have minimized all of the above mistakes, all at no cost to the Recall organizers except they never took me up on my offer.

I’m sure there were other minor mistakes but the above mistakes were enough to kill the effort.

Some will say that I am speaking out of turn, so let me say this. In 2002 when we Recalled then-Milw. County Exec. Tom Ament, Mr. Ament hired some very prominent attorneys to represent him in attempting to have the entire Recall effort thrown out. It was some time after that Recall was all completed that I ran into one of Mr. Ament’s attorneys and he told me that our Recall was one of the best Recall’s they had ever seen. They could only find 2%-3% of the signatures that they thought they could challenge and there was no way that they could even begin to challenge enough signatures to have the entire effort thrown out, so Tom Ament threw in the towel.

Some will say that this Recall should not have been attempted and that they should wait until a regular election cycle. I disagree with that premise, the power of a Recall is to single out a politician in a special election. I strongly believe that Recalls are a good thing as it keeps politicians of all stripes on their toes and looking over their shoulder, so we should be making Recalls easier not harder.

Orville Seymer is one of the founding members of CRG Network and he has participated in dozens of Recalls around the State of Wisconsin including the historic Recall of Milw. County Exec. Tom Ament in 2002

1) Evers is now emboldened.

2) Dems are emboldened.

3) Evers was able to raise lots of money.

4) This makes the anti-Evers crowd look bad.

5) It’s, as one recall supporter said, embarrassing.

6) Time was wasted.

7) Energy was wasted.

8) The goal is to win, not meet a whole bunch of new friends and sing Kumbaya. Goal not met.

9) Recall failed, but the best chance to get Evers out wasn’t this. It’s 2022.

10) Legit contenders to oust Evers in 2022 can now start planning, if they haven’t already.

A total waste.

Poorly organized, at the wrong time, with a totally inept recall leader.