States rush to prepare for huge surge of mail voting

A huge surge in voting by mail is coming whether states prepare for it or not — and without clear direction from the federal government, states are preparing to muscle through their own changes to get ready for the glut of mail ballots coming their way in November.

Wisconsin’s conflict-ridden April 7 elections went off without the state government making any major policy changes to encourage absentee voting, but more than two-thirds of voters cast their votes via the mail anyway, many times higher than the 12 percent absentee voting rate in the spring 2016 election. The surge overwhelmed election officials, with some staff working 100-hour weeks to try to fill all the ballot requests and reports of the state’s system crashing under the intense workload.