CNN Projection: Republican Jen Kiggans will win

Election officials for four of Wisconsin’s largest cities told CNN that they’re all likely to finish vote-counting within the next two hours. Milwaukee, the state’s most populous city, expects to finish its tally of absentee ballots before 10 p.m. CT, Claire Woodall-Vogg, the Milwaukee Election Commission executive director, said at a news conference. That’s hours earlier than during the 2020 election, when the city took until after 3 a.m. to finish counting and transmitting results to county officials. The speedier process is in part because there are only about a third as many absentee ballots for the city to count this year, as compared to 2020, Woodall-Vogg said. In Madison, the state’s capital, results will be transmitted to the county within the next hour, City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl told CNN. Madison does not have a “central count” of absentee ballots, so both in-person and absentee ballots are counted at local polling places. Green Bay will likely be “wrapping up” its count “in the next hour or two,” City Clerk Celestine Jeffreys told CNN. “We have a lot of workers, definitely fewer absentee ballots, and we also have speeded up our process,” Jeffreys said. And in Racine, City Clerk Tara McMenamin said in a text message that she anticipated counting will be finished close to 10 p.m. CT. More background: In Wisconsin’s decentralized election system, municipalities tally votes and then report their results to counties, which then post the results online. So it could take additional time for counties to publicly report the results they receive. 
Read More