The debate is especially interesting in Wisconsin, which allows greater freedom to vote than most states and relies more on municipalities to stage elections rather than counties or the state. Polling place supervision Because elections are infrequent and local governments are cash-strapped, very little permanent election bureaucracy exists. That leaves polling places in the hands of citizen volunteers with minimal training, a low comfort level with technology and little experience in crowd control. Many municipal clerks say they struggle to find enough people for the jobs. While clerks welcome and applaud retired citizens' help, they would like to groom younger workers to share some of the load.
Recruitment is difficult.
In this election, that reality left poll workers who were already exhausted by a surge of on-site registrants to count absentee ballots into the wee hours of Wednesday morning in some municipalities. If it weren't for those poll workers, we wouldn't have elections in this state. Henry, who has increased training for poll workers, hired 1,800 people for election night and said things went smoothly overall. Milwaukee County, Madison and Green Bay all have the electronic systems. The punch-card ballots are much cheaper to produce than those for the electronic machines.