Wisconsin Elections Commission Asking the U.S. Postal Service to Speed Up Deliveries of Absentee Ballots

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2026 -- 9:00 AM

(Rich Kremer, Wisconsin Public Radio) 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.

According to Rich Kremer with Wisconsin Public Radio, 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.”

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