MILWAUKEE — Early absentee voting has already started in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.
Milwaukee voter Andy Topcik sent TMJ4 an email after he received a postcard claiming the election is April 17—10 days late.
Election day is April 7th.
"I have a friend in the town of Burlington who also received one with the wrong dates, and I'm just worried about voter confusion," Topcik said.
The postcard was mailed from Baltimore, Maryland, but has no return address, name, or organization listed. The mailer supports Chris Taylor in the state Supreme Court race against Maria Lazar.
Watch: Milwaukee voter gets anonymous mailer with the wrong election date
"These campaign postcards were not approved or authorized by our campaign," Taylor's campaign said.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission says it, "reviews all complaints it receives, if any, and will take appropriate action when filed." But the commission did not say if it had received any complaints about wrong date postcards.
Topcik noticed the glaring mistake right away. He said the date was prominent on the front of the postcard and described it as surreal. Topcik is an avid voter and wanted to get the word out in case others received the wrong information.
"People need to be able to exercise the right to vote, and if they have the wrong dates, they'll miss out, and that becomes disenfranchised voters, and you just can't have that," Topcik said.
TMJ4 reported on an anonymous wrong-date postcard during last year's contentious state Supreme Court race.
Sam Liebert is with the voting rights advocate group All Voting is Local. He advises voters to check with reliable sources if they have questions about mailers or where and when to vote.
"I would always tell people to make sure you still do your research if you get anything in the mail, or email," Liebert said.
"I think, you know, myvote.wi.gov is the best place to go. You can simply just put in your first name, last name, date of birth, look up your voter registration status, see where you need to vote, look at a copy of your sample ballot," Liebert said.
So far, early absentee voting is down compared to this time a year ago for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Currently, 53,000 people have voted in-person absentee, which is down 57% compared to a year ago. Overall, early voting, including absentee mail-in ballots, is down 43% with 143,000 early votes.
This year's state Supreme Court race does have the same intensity as last year's, which included record spending, a record number of campaign commercials, and a record turnout for a Wisconsin Supreme Court election.
This story was reported on-air by Charles Benson and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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