By Vanessa Swales, Wisconsin Watch,
As ballots began pouring in by mail after Wisconsin’s April 7 primary, local election officials became increasingly perplexed over which ones to count.
A federal judge had ordered that ballots arriving as many as six days after the election should be accepted, but the U.S. Supreme Court overturned that, ruling that ballots should be counted only if they were postmarked by Election Day. But many ballots were arriving without postmarks, or with unreadable marks.
Local election officials turned to the state agency tasked with helping them: the Wisconsin Elections Commission (WEC) but the three Democrats and three Republicans on the commission deadlocked along party lines and provided no guidance. This left the local officials to decide on their own what to do — a situation that has become more common this election year, according to an investigation by Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica.
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