The record number of voters who flocked to polling places Tuesday did not deter Wisconsin from having a smooth electoral process, according to various state officials.
The voter turnout reached 80 percent in Madison, according to a press release from the mayor's office. About 72.7 percent of Wisconsin voters went to the polls, State Election Board official Kevin Kennedy said.
\Overall it went very smoothly for the number of voters we had,"" Dane County Clerk Joe Parisi said.
Wisconsin largely evaded the long lines that plagued other areas of the country, except in university wards where there were many first-time voters, Kennedy said.
""One of the interesting phenomena was that we encouraged people to vote during off-peak hours and they did,"" Parisi said.
Many people voted early in the morning and lines reduced by 10:30 a.m., according to City Clerk Sharon Christensen.
""At the end of the night there weren't lines which is the opposite of what usually happens,"" she said. ""That really helped because problems that happen earlier in the day are easier to address.""
Election officials expected a high turnout and prepared by recruiting more poll workers. Madison recruited twice as many workers this year than in 2000, Parisi said, and hastened the speed of the line by separating voters who needed to register from those who had already registered.
Another new wrinkle in the electoral process this year is the introduction of provisional ballots. If a person believes he has been unfairly denied the right to vote for whatever reason, he can now cast a provisional ballot and the validity of his vote will be determined after the election. Very few of these were filed in Wisconsin due to the availability of same-day voter registration, Parisi said.
No counties in Wisconsin used electronic voting machines, and the last three counties to use punch-card ballots in the 2000 election used standard ballots this year, Kennedy said. Voting watchdog groups have criticized electronic voting machines for their supposed susceptibility to voting fraud, and punch card ballots have fallen out of favor since Florida in 2000 when ""hanging chad"" entered the American lexicon.
In the end, local officials have little to criticize about the voting process this year.
""There's always an internal pressure to make sure everything goes right,"" Kennedy said. ""It's the poll workers who get the credit-people who give up their time on Election Day and work long hours make this thing work.\
