During an election year that saw an estimated nationwide participation rate in the range of 70 percent, by some accounts, it wouldn’t be surprising to find large numbers of voter engagement in a key battleground state where the two major candidates campaigned heavily.
Even so, Wisconsin‘s 90% participation rate, along with a suspicious Wednesday morning bump that helped put Democrat Joe Biden over the top, spurred calls for a closer look.
The only thing we did on Election Day was tell them how many votes they needed on Election Night. pic.twitter.com/lOG2iV4l2e
— Andy Swan (@AndySwan) November 4, 2020
An unofficial audit of votes to voter rolls, conducted by the Milwaukee City Wire, found seven counties with more than 100% participation.
Two of those had participation rates exceeding 200%.
Unsurprisingly, all of them were in the heavily blue area surrounding Milwaukee.
Overall, the city reported a participation rate of 84%, with 90 of the city’s 324 wards reporting more than 90 percent participation.
Wisconsin concluded its official count with Biden boasting a roughly 20,000 vote lead over President Donald Trump.
Much of that came from Milwaukee’s roughly 170,000 absentee votes, which erased a Trump lead of about 110,000 as many went to bed on election night thinking the president would once again claim victory there, as he did in 2016.
President Trump currently leads Joe Biden in Wisconsin by 109,074 votes.
Nearly 170,000 absentee votes in Milwaukee County are being counted RIGHT NOW. We should have the results around 3:45 a.m.
This could really all come down to Wisconsin
— Tim Elliott NBC15 (@TheTimReport) November 4, 2020
But in parts of Milwaukee, Biden outpaced Trump by a factor of more than eight times the amount of vote that Hillary Clinton beat him by in the city.
Overall, about 80 percent of Milwaukee city residents supported the Democrat, according to the NOQ Report.
Milwaukee finally completed its count around 3 a.m. Wednesday morning, with Claire Woodall–Vogg, the executive director for the Milwaukee Election Commission using a police escort to deliver the ballots from their central counting facility to the county courthouse.
Oh, nothing, just the future of the country emerging from a police SUV in the middle of the night in deserted downtown Milwaukee. https://t.co/GhOGMujN64
— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) November 4, 2020
Other votes from places like Green Bay and Kenosha also continued to trickle in, giving Biden what media reported to be an insurmountable edge by around 4 a.m.
Some criticized the fact that the state election officials were only able to begin the count on Election Day, leading to unnecessary delays given the number of mail-in votes.
Just reminding you guys (again) that many clerks in the state have been asking for years for the Wisconsin State Legislature to allow them to start counting absentee ballots before Election day. https://t.co/1EweCRxpIU
— Mary Spicuzza (@MSpicuzzaMJS) November 4, 2020
The coincidental fact that current Democrat Gov. Tony Evers had likewise bested incumbent Republican Scott Walker in 2018 under the shroud of secret late-night shenanigans also was not lost on local reporter Mary Spicuzza.
Another reminder about Milwaukee absentee ballots: Milwaukee officials were still counting absentee ballots after midnight in 2018, when @ScottWalker lost to @GovEvers.
Here’s an article @DanielBice & I wrote about that back in 2018https://t.co/BFR8b58bYj
— Mary Spicuzza (@MSpicuzzaMJS) November 4, 2020
While many news outlets subsequently declared Wisconsin a win for Biden, putting him closer to the 270 needed electoral votes, Trump’s legal team has now called for a recount in the state.
