Multiple Issues With Voting Reported In Wisconsin, Including Many Affecting Latinx Voters
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Jammed machines, not enough poll workers, and confusion over student IDs are just a few of the voting issues that came up Tuesday night in the crucial swing state of Wisconsin.
Meanwhile, CBS 2 Investigator Dorothy Tucker discovered another problem affecting Hispanic voters. Tucker reported it looks like Hispanic voters could be the target of voter suppression on this Election Day.
We're learning about a few issues. At the top of the list are complaints about polling places around the state that do not have Spanish-speaking poll workers.
About 7 percent of the voters in Wisconsin are Latino, and community activists say they tend to vote Democratic.
Lack of signs in Spanish is another issue.
Because of COVID-19 concerns, curbside voting is popular this election. It means voters can stay in their cars and poll workers bring them the ballots.
But in the Town of Madison, which is a small conservative community inside of the city of Madison, voters complained there were no signs in Spanish announcing curbside voting - so Latino poll watchers made their own.
A community activist says language should not be a barrier to voting.
"There's all these like weird rules, so it's really difficult to navigate so even if you speak the language. So if you don't, that makes it all that much harder, and people give up, you know, or are turned away," said election protection coordinator Anna Dvorak.
RELATED: Concerns Mount In Wisconsin Over Early Voting, Ballots, Voter Suppression As Election Day Looms
There was another issue in Waukesha, where there was early voting at two libraries in the Latino community for the last couple of weeks. But the libraries were not open on Tuesday, which caused some confusion.
Poll watchers say about 50 Latino voters came to the library anyway and they had to direct them to the correct polling places.
There has also been a record number of absentee ballots in Wisconsin, totaling 2.1 million. More than 90 percent were returned, but one issue we heard Tuesday morning and throughout the day is that some voters complained they mailed in ballot a couple of weeks ago, but there was no confirmation on the website that the election office received their ballots.
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