MISQUAH — Thirty-one absentee ballots had been issued as of Monday afternoon, four days into a voting period that runs until November 2, which Clerk Donna Skoglund reports is ahead of the same point in 2022 by nine and ahead of 2018 by more than that.

Nineteen were voted in person at the window and twelve were mailed on application. Skoglund notes without editorializing that the first person through the door Friday morning was waiting when she unlocked it at eight, has voted absentee in every election since 2014, and has never once given a reason, which she is not required to do.

The reminder that produces a phone call every cycle, restated: a mailed ballot must be received by the clerk, not postmarked, by the close of polls November 3. Anyone mailing after October 26 should bring it in instead. The clerk will take ballots at the window until eight o’clock on election night.

The third school board seat — created when a member moved to Wisconsin in July — still has no candidate. It will be decided by write-in, and the district has confirmed that a write-in winner who declines to serve simply leaves the seat to board appointment. Two people have telephoned the district office to ask what the job involves. Neither has filed anything, because there is nothing to file.

The Chamber’s candidate forum is Thursday, October 8, 7 p.m., at the Legion hall. Three of the five local candidates have confirmed: Lindgren, Wheeler and Bratlie. Ald. Lloyd Bunde has not responded to the Chamber and told this newspaper he had not decided whether a forum was “a thing a person does in a town where everybody already knows him.” Doug Ferrell, unopposed for school board, said he would come if somebody reminded him. This is that reminder.

Sample ballots are posted at city hall, the library and the Daybreak.

Of the nineteen who voted in person, Skoglund reports that eleven were over seventy, three were under thirty-five, and one asked her whether he could bring his ballot back the next day if he wanted to think about it. He could not, and did not, and voted.

The clerk has also had four people ask whether the Hagen recommendation is on the November ballot. It is not. It goes to the council on October 6 and the council votes; nothing about the plat appears on any ballot. Skoglund has answered this four times and expects to answer it forty more.