What Democracy Looks Like in Rural Wisconsin: One Woman Counting Her Neighbors’ Votes

Graceann Toberman climbed out of bed at 3:50 a.m. on Tuesday, when the sky over her 120-acre farm in southern Wisconsin was inky black, the animals outside were sleeping and the only sound was the flapping of the American flag in the wind. Her to-do list was beckoning.

Feed cattle.

Feed chickens.

Check electric fence to make sure that the darned deer didn’t knock it over again.

And when the chores are done: Hurry over to the town hall in Magnolia and administer the presidential election.

Ms. Toberman, 61, is one of the more than 1,800 municipal clerks in Wisconsin, which has more local election officials than any other state. For the last 21 years, if there were ballots to count, voters to register or elections to run in Magnolia, a rural farming community of 734 people, Ms. Toberman, who was elected to the nonpartisan role, has been the woman in charge.

“I think we’re all ready,” she said, wearing jeans and rubber boots, hauling buckets of feed outside her chicken coop just before 5 a.m., one of her last chores before changing clothes and driving into town. “I try not to be in a mad dash.”