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45 Degrees North: The Ice Storm Election [1]
['Donna Kallner', 'The Daily Yonder', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width', 'Vertical-Align Bottom .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar']
Date: 2025-04-25
April 1, 2025 (no joke) was the spring election in Wisconsin for non-partisan offices. You may have heard about our judicial race for a 10-year-term on the state supreme court. It made the national news and set records for both campaign spending and voter turnout.
What you may not have heard about is the ice storm that hit northern parts of the state a few days earlier, causing extended power outages and uncertainty about restoration as icy branches kept coming down on power lines. As March went out like a lion, the question I kept getting from friends and neighbors was: Will there still be an election on Tuesday?
Rest assured, there are systems and protocols in place to help election officials meet challenges like this. Most of us will never see them in action. I happened to have a front row seat to some of it this time.
So here’s my story about rural northern Wisconsin’s Ice Storm Election of 2025.
The Storm. On Saturday, March 29, the day of the storm, I had planned to review training materials from the Wisconsin Elections Commission. Our Chief Inspector couldn’t work this election because she was on the ballot. The same was true for another one of our poll workers. And our Town Clerk, who administers elections for this municipality, was also on the ballot so she could be available to answer questions, but not working in the polling place.
That left three of us from the election board to work the polls, with me serving as Chief Inspector for the first time. I had completed the training, but wanted a refresher before Election Day. So that Saturday, I reviewed the Chief Inspector Election Day curriculum, and planned to review the baseline Chief Inspector materials on Sunday.
But overnight, the weather got worse. On Sunday morning, our volunteer fire department went into storm response mode. My husband and I are both volunteers. He went to work on one of the crews clearing a lane of travel on town roads and marking downed power lines with traffic cones. I went to work with the crew at the Town Hall, recording who was doing what and where. I took my election manual along to review if there was time. There wasn’t.
The Hall. The Town Hall is adjacent to our fire station, which is very small. For trainings and large incidents, we use the Hall. But election materials, including the ballot tabulator, had been set up there for the required public test of voting equipment the week before the election. The fire chief called the Town Clerk for authorization for me to move the machine and other materials out of the Hall and into her office, which we could secure. That let us use the Hall for Incident Command, gave us access to the Hall’s kitchen to feed volunteer responders, and allowed us to open the hall to our community.
The Generator. Just last year, the Town Board approved the installation of a backup generator. So for the first time during an extended outage, we had power in the Hall, Clerk’s office, and fire station. We posted on Facebook the hours the Hall would be open to anyone who needed to warm up, charge devices, or fill containers with water.
The School. Our K-12 school also has a standby generator, a commons area that can be closed off from classrooms for a warming shelter, and not just toilets but also showers available. The school also opened to the community that Sunday.
Meanwhile at home… By late afternoon on Sunday, roads were passable, although trees were still coming down. Bill and I got home in time to see what damage there was at our place, worry about a tree leaning at the end of our driveway, eat, play Scrabble by the light of hurricane lamps, and fall into bed. We fully expected power to still be out the following day. So the fire department’s plan for Monday was to conduct welfare checks at addresses of vulnerable members of the community, who could be getting pretty cold by then.
Welfare checks. On Monday morning, fire department volunteers gathered to organize. Our Town Clerk needed to move things back into the Hall for the Election on Tuesday. So we worked out of the fire station, where we have just enough outlets to plug in a laptop, printer, a radio charger, and a crock pot of hot dogs.
The municipal Clerk for the Village of White Lake got the message that we were organizing to do welfare checks and showed up to help. While other teams spread out to check on folks in the 155 square miles of our service area that surround the Village, she spent the morning with a fire department volunteer checking on a long list of elders who live in that two-square-mile area.
Change of Venue. By late morning on Monday, it was unknown whether power restoration would happen before the polls opened on Tuesday. With branches still coming down, it seemed likely that additional outages could occur after restoration. With our generator, the Town of Wolf River could operate a polling place. But halls for the Village and for the adjacent Town of Evergreen did not have generators. So it was decided to move those polling places to the school.
I was busy with fire department stuff that afternoon, but heard bits of conversation about what it takes to move polling places in an emergency situation: Questions for the County Clerk on a continuity of operations plan in compliance with Wisconsin statutes. Coordination with the school district. Notifications to the Wisconsin Elections Commission so the MyVote.wi.gov polling place listings could be updated. Postings about the change of location to all the places where municipalities put public meeting notices. Social media posts. Notifications to poll workers. Communicating a plan and needs to the school’s custodial staff. Setting up two separate polling areas for the two municipalities in the school commons. Coordination with the county Sheriff for a police escort for the transfer of voting equipment and materials from the original venues to the newly designated polling stations. Because there are chain of custody requirements for things like ballots and poll books.
Election Security. When voters are busy cutting their way through debris to clear their own driveways or bugging out to areas that didn’t lose power, they don’t see all the effort that goes into an emergency relocation of a polling place. But let me tell you, rural municipal clerks and county clerks and poll workers take election security seriously – whether the sun is shining or ice-laden branches are falling all around them. I don’t know when most of them had time to worry about whether the contents of their home freezers would still be good when the power came back on. I sure didn’t until after the election.
Disaster funds. Meanwhile, back at the fire station in a municipality that didn’t have a change of venue for voting, there were questions about whether our Town would qualify for Wisconsin Disaster Fund reimbursement. That was for others to address. But I was on the team logging response activities, and we were being advised that additional information would be needed. A lot more detailed information.
I’m still not clear on how much of that is absolutely required (umm, geo-tagged photos and GPS coordinates for every tree removed from a road? Mileage notes assigned to each separate incident? Is every tree a separate incident?). It’s a lot more work to recreate detailed records after the fact than to record the necessary information as you go along. We learned that applying for FEMA reimbursement after a derecho hit our area.
But state Disaster Assessment forms are not part of our Incident Command documents kit. And frankly, they are not designed for use by rural volunteer fire departments working in horrible conditions to reopen roads as quickly as possible for emergency responders, utility crews, and elders and people with newborn infants leaving their homes in search of motels with power. They certainly aren’t designed for a tired volunteer with a headache from breathing spilled chainsaw fuel.
Tick tock. There were also concerns about the exact window of time in which initial damage reports must be compiled if we hoped to qualify for disaster funds. Communities that qualify must incur expenses in an amount that exceeds a threshold based upon population. The first guesstimate I heard sounded like we would clear that threshold, but the only way to know would be to add up how many people had worked how many hours doing what so far. And then it would land back on the Town Clerk’s desk for further action. All of that with polls set to open in just a few hours.
I heard the next morning that we would not be pursuing disaster funds. And that was a relief to me. With my inexperience as a Chief Inspector leading a skeleton crew of poll workers and the expectation of heavy voter turnout, I selfishly appreciated knowing one thing with a looming deadline was off the Clerk’s desk.
Election Day. At sunrise, the tree leaning over the end of our driveway was still standing, and I didn’t have to call someone to pick me up and get me to the polls on time. Voter turnout was excellent, and the three of us working the polls stayed busy. Surprisingly, we had just a few voters discombobulated by changes in polling places. One voter thought his usual venue had changed and he could vote in ours (it hadn’t and he couldn’t). Another couple went to the school first after hearing that our polling place had moved (we hadn’t, they sent the voters to us).
The usual things happened that required notation as incidents on the Inspector’s Statement. For example, some people voted for too many candidates in the school board and Town supervisor races. When that happens, they get an error signal when they feed the ballot into the tabulator. We have a procedure for spoiling that ballot and issuing a replacement. It has to be documented, and spoiled ballots secured.
We had some unexpected things that happened, too. There was a fender bender in the parking lot, and the driver came back to the polling place to find the owner of the vehicle he hit. The long lag screws that had held the frame for voting booth #2 securely into the studs for 20 years pulled out while a voter was marking his ballot. The fire department was paged as a firefighter was entering the voting booth. Before he could ask, I told him he had to cast his ballot before responding: His voter number had been recorded in the poll book and the ballot issued. Ballots may not be taken out of the polling area, and securing an issued ballot while the voter responds to “vehicle submerged in water, occupant out” is not in the election day manual.
Ballots. With high turnout for a spring election, by early evening we were counting the remaining blank ballots and feeling mildly concerned about running short. Clerks use historical voter turnout numbers when ordering ballots. Municipalities have to pay for them, and we don’t want to pay for stuff that won’t be needed. How could they anticipate that $100 million in campaign spending would contribute to record turnout? Plus, Wisconsin allows same-day registration at the polls, and those numbers are hard to predict. And voters are allowed up to three chances if they overvote or otherwise spoil a ballot and have to request a replacement. So, placing a ballot order is not an exact science.
We didn’t run out this time, thank goodness, but were prepared anyway. Our ballots are printed on special paper with a weight and contrast readable by the optical scanner in the tabulator. Last November in the general election, we did run short. We had to xerox additional ballots. Those had to be cast separately then hand counted at the end of the night. A hand count is always performed by at least two people. If our hand-count tallies don’t match, we count again. It’s more work and more stress that no one wants at the end of a long day. But there’s a procedure for it because stuff happens.
Open Meeting. At the end of the night, even with a tabulator there is counting to do. The number of actual ballots in the tabulator’s ballot container must match the number of voters recorded in the poll books. Ballots cast and spoiled ballots are sealed into a secure container with a serial number that’s recorded. There’s a lot of paperwork. Normally, the Chief Inspector could chip away at that paperwork throughout the day. The Clerk came to my rescue when it became apparent that I was behind. With her help and the kind understanding and support of the other poll workers, we checked off all the boxes, prepared copies of poll books and results tapes to go to the county and two school boards, conducted the canvass of votes for offices in our own Town government, called in results to the county clerk, and secured materials that would be delivered to the county for the canvass that would certify the statewide races. All of those activities that happen after the polls close are considered an open meeting. Voters are welcome to observe the process. It’s reassuring to see all the checks and balances.
After Election Day. Snow flurries were just starting again as I drove home that night. By morning, the roads were nasty. Nevertheless, our Town Clerk delivered election materials to the county clerk and two school districts – one of which is mostly in an adjacent county and has only a handful of voters who live in this municipality. They were still without power. She put on about 150 miles, a good part of it creeping along behind a snowplow.
When $100 million dollars is spent on the campaign for what’s supposed to be a nonpartisan judicial office, it’s hard not to be cynical about, well, just about everything. But there’s nothing like a peek behind the scenes at the hard-working, dedicated people who serve rural communities to restore some faith in our system of democracy. You may only see your municipal clerk when you’re paying your property tax bill or getting a dog license. But trust me – they are busy meeting unrealistic expectations with limited time and insufficient resources every day – even when the sky is falling.
Donna Kallner writes from Langlade County in rural northern Wisconsin.
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