Hundreds of Wisconsin election offices still rely on personal email accounts such as Gmail and Yahoo, leaving voters with fewer ways to confirm that election messages and websites are official, according to an analysis of state data. About one in three municipal clerks use consumer email for election business, and every municipality doing so has fewer than 5,000 residents. Most have fewer than 1,000. Wisconsin has roughly 1,850 municipal clerks and 72 county clerks involved in administering elections, many in communities without dedicated information-technology staff. Government domains, including .gov, are restricted to verified government entities and are harder to impersonate, election security specialists say. Their use can help residents distinguish legitimate notices from phishing attempts or fake election information. The risk is not theoretical: election officials in multiple states have faced attempted email breaches, and authorities have warned about websites designed to mimic real election offices. The gap reflects uneven resources more than a statewide shortfall. About 49% of Wisconsin election jurisdictions use government email domains, while another 18% use custom municipal domains. A separate national comparison found that about 43% of Wisconsin municipalities and counties with listed websites use government domains, close to the 44% national average. Larger jurisdictions have generally made the transition; consumer email use is concentrated in small municipalities. Lac du Flambeau, a northern Wisconsin town of about 3,500 residents, upgraded its systems after Clerk Susan Schoonover started the job four years ago. The town obtained a grant to move staff to government email and launched an official website under a government domain. Schoonover said communities need to modernize to reduce the risk of systems being tampered with or data being lost. For smaller towns, ongoing costs can be a barrier. Big Bend, a Rusk County town of about 400 people, is weighing its options after its email provider announced it would stop hosting the town’s email. Clerk Sandy Rassbach said maintaining a government domain could cost a couple thousand dollars, a substantial expense for the community. Registering a .gov domain is free, but email hosting, technical support and security services can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars each year. The Wisconsin Elections Commission has offered grants to help local governments strengthen election security and adopt government domains, while Wisconsin Emergency Management is administering $4.7 million in federal cybersecurity grants. The commission has warned that federal funding for some programs is dwindling and said lawmakers may need to provide more support if the state wants to continue helping local offices. Election consultant Trevor Timmons said small-town clerks who work part time and lack IT departments can struggle to make the switch. One possible incentive, he said, would be to tie future election security grants to adopting government email. The commission already requires municipalities receiving current $2,000 security subgrants to use the money first for operating-system and antivirus updates. In Rusk County, 27 of the county’s 33 municipalities use consumer email accounts, despite serving a combined population of about 14,000. The town of Willard switched to government email four years ago. Deputy Treasurer Linda Bentley, who helped lead the change, said the town’s official addresses have made it easier for residents to recognize and trust communications from the clerk’s office. With a November election approaching, Timmons cautioned jurisdictions against making major email-system changes immediately. He said they can begin the process of applying for a government domain and prepare to complete a transition after the election.