Wisconsin early voting delayed by label printing issues

Early voting in Wisconsin has been delayed due to label printing problems, causing voters to wait hours in line to vote in some cases.

The state began early voting on Tuesday, with voters waiting up to three hours to cast ballots in West Bend, a city 40 miles northwest of Milwaukee with a population of about 32,000, The Washington Post reported. After state election officials said late Tuesday that the computer issues causing the label printing problems were resolved, they acknowledged on Wednesday that they had occurred again. Voters waited about 90 minutes to vote on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, more than 97,000 voters in the state cast ballots in person. Wisconsin early voting will continue through Nov. 3.

The labels with voters' names and addresses are usually printed immediately and must be affixed to the ballot envelopes. However, the labels took at least two minutes to print on Tuesday.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) does not know when the problem will be fixed and is still analyzing it. WEC recommended clerks write the names and addresses by hand, which the clerks said would take longer and that printed labels are less difficult to read than handwriting.

“We’ve had long, long lines,” Milwaukee elections director Paulina Gutierrez said Tuesday. “We always expect long lines on the first day, and turnout has been strong. So it’s like we’re happy to see it. The problem is that the processing is taking so much longer.”

While state election officials said the label printing delays appeared to be the result of an information technology problem that other government agencies are also facing, a spokeswoman for the governor's office disputed that other areas of state government were experiencing computer slowdowns.