Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of 64. Sunrise is 7:19, and sunset is 5:57, for 10 hours, 38 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent, with 48.2 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1946, a camera on board the V-2 No. 13 rocket takes the first photograph of earth from outer space.
Henry Redman reports Nearly 100k voters cast ballots on first day of early voting:
The first day of in-person early voting in Wisconsin saw 97,436 people cast ballots for the Nov. 5 election. So many people voted on Tuesday that it caused a slowdown of the state election software system, leading to long lines in some places.
The number of ballots cast on the opening day of early voting far surpassed other recent elections. In the 2022 midterm election, which had gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races on the ballot, 33,644 people cast ballots on the first day of early voting. In the 2020 presidential election 79,774 people showed up on the first day of early voting.
Despite Tuesday’s high turnout, the popularity of absentee voting in general still lags behind the 2020 presidential election when the COVID-19 pandemic pushed many voters to vote remotely.
After more than four years of Republicans and Donald Trump attacking the voting system and making accusations that any voting methods other than going to the polls on Election Day are vulnerable to fraud, the GOP nonetheless encouraged Republicans this year to vote early.
Early voting in Wisconsin, Florida, Texas, Illinois and Georgia show lines outside polls: