City officials worry about spring election
Coronavirus could cause problems for elderly poll workers, absentees
In three weeks, hundreds of thousands of voters will cast ballots in Wisconsin’s presidential primary and state and local elections.
But election day presents a serious problem — it could spread COVID-19 to poll workers and voters.
That’s why Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and City of Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Neil Albrecht sounded an alarm Sunday.
They want people to vote, but they also don’t want lots of folks to congregate in polling places where half of all election officials are age 60 or older. Elderly people have so far borne the brunt of serious illnesses and deaths from the coronavirus.
“We don’t want to lose one single voter in the city of Milwaukee,” said Albrecht.
Albrecht and Barrett strongly encouraged people to vote by absentee ballot or early at one of three sites in the city of Milwaukee or at their polling place on election day when it’s not busy.
With the election 23 days away, around 12,000 people have requested absentee ballots in the city and requests are coming in at around 1,000 per day. By comparison, 10,000 people in the city voted by absentee during the 2016 presidential election.
Albrecht anticipates as many as 50,000 to 60,000 in the city of Milwaukee will vote absentee, out of a total of 292,000 registered voters.
“I think the real key here,” Barrett said at city hall Sunday afternoon, “is having more and more people voting absentee in this election. We don’t want to have a lot of people at the polls on election day.”
But absentee votes present their own challenges, Barrett noted.
All absentee ballots must be counted on election day. The city uses a warehouse on the city’s south side staffed by a few hundred workers to do that, but since health officials are strongly recommending people not gather in large groups, counting absentee ballots could spread the virus among those workers.
Barrett has talked about his concerns with the governor’s office as well as top officials in the Legislature. He said he’s not sure if rules can be changed in time for the April 7 election.
Until 2016 absentee ballots postmarked on election date but received up to three days after the election could be counted. Now only absentee ballots received by election day count.
Albrecht said he is asking the Legislature “to reinstate that, knowing that this state will have a really significant number of absentee voters in the election and we don’t want their votes to be lost because of this outbreak.”
Because half of poll workers are in the at-risk group of getting sick from the coronavirus, the mayor strongly suggested younger people, particularly high school and college students whose schools are closed because of the outbreak, apply online to become poll workers.
The one-day job pays $130 and typically runs from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Applications can be filled out online at city.milwaukee.gov
Around 1,800 poll workers are needed on election day. Applicants will be contacted soon to undergo training and in most cases will be assigned to a polling place near their home.
Milwaukee County employees who are not in coronavirus high-risk groups will be released from their jobs with pay to train and work as poll workers, said County Clerk George Christenson.
The mayor said he’s hoping the city’s younger population will “get involved civically to help us to help our community at a time when we want to make sure our democracy is running in a fluid manner.”
Polling places will be frequently cleaned and disinfected. Voters can bring their own black ballpoint pens to fill out their ballots. To slow the spread of the virus, voters are encouraged to visit their polling place at slow times and not wait to go at peak times in the morning and evening when lines typically are long.
Though county parks are closed because of the outbreak, polling places at park facilities will be open on election day.
The city will open three early-voting centers starting Monday, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the two weekends before the election — March 28 and 29 and April 4 and 5. The early voting sites are:
❚ Zeidler Municipal Building, 841 N. Broadway, Room 102.
❚ Midtown Center, 5700 W. Capitol Drive.
❚ Zablocki Library, 3501 W. Oklahoma Ave. Two city polling places have been moved because of closures from the coronavirus. The voting site at Wilson Commons, an assisted living facility on the south side, will now be at the Wilson Park Pavilion, and the polls at now-closed University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Sandburg Hall will move to Plymouth Church, 2717 E. Hampshire St.
A hotline to answer voters’ questions was recently set up at 414-278-VOTE.
Albrecht noted that election laws were not written to take into account emergencies such as a pandemic sweeping throughout the globe.
It’s likely the number of elections observers at polling places will be sharply curtailed to lessen the amount of people at voting sites. Plus special voting deputies who normally go to nursing homes and health care facilities to help people vote will not be allowed into those places. Instead, voters in nursing homes must vote by absentee ballots through the mail.
The deadline to register to vote by mail or online is Wednesday. A registration form along with proof of residency must be postmarked to municipal clerks by that day. Voters who can match their name, date of birth, address and driver’s license or state ID number can register online through Wednesday. The deadline to register in municipal clerks’ offices is April 3.
Barrett said he’s worried that people who haven’t registered to vote, or must re-register because they have moved, won’t do that by mail or online by Wednesday or at their local clerk’s office by April 3, which means they will need to register at the polls.
“I think that there are going to be people following the close of business on (April 3) who will start showing symptoms of COVID-19 and the prudent thing for them to do is not to come to a place where there’s a lot of people on April 7,” said Barrett.