State health leader: Tuesday vote sends wrong message
MADISON - One of the state’s top public health experts says Republican legislative leaders are putting Wisconsin at unnecessary risk by refusing to delay the election or stop in-person voting.
James Conway, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Global Health Institute, said allowing people to gather at polling locations during Tuesday’s spring election will also damage the effectiveness of state leaders’ message to stay away from each other to blunt the spread of coronavirus.
“It just seems really irresponsible to make this one giant exception,” Conway said in an interview. “I was a little naive a week or so ago in thinking, ‘Oh, they’ve got to realize they’ve got to delay.’ ... And then time has crept on and I’m like, really? I am very concerned.”
Gov. Tony Evers on March 25 issued an order closing scores of businesses in an effort to limit the spread of the virus and Conway says, so far, that action has been successful in preventing the virus from spreading like wildfire.
Evers initially supported holding Tuesday’s election as planned but last week asked Republican lawmakers to instead send all registered voters an absentee ballot to limit or eliminate the need to vote in person.
On Friday, he switched gears and called a special legislative session to delay the election and close the polls. Within that week and a half, 1,300 new cases of the virus and 42 more deaths were reported.
As of mid-afternoon Saturday, the state Department of Health Services reported 2,112 positive cases of the virus and 56 deaths.
“From a public health stand it’s both the wrong message and it’s taking an enormous gamble. I don’t know if it’s selfish or naive. I don’t quite understand what the motivation is.”
GOP leaders of the Legislature are forging ahead, saying holding the election is paramount.
“From a public health stand it’s both the wrong message and it’s taking an enormous gamble,” Conway said. “I don’t know if it’s selfish or naive. I don’t quite understand what the motivation is.”
Aides to Fitzgerald and Vos did not immediately respond Saturday to Conway’s comments.
State health officials have recommended limiting interaction to five people total to safeguard against contracting the highly contagious virus, which causes serious respiratory illness and fever. But on election day, some clerks are facing a possible scenario of hundreds or thousands meeting at one polling location.
In Milwaukee, just five polling locations will be open for the 40,000 to 50,000 voters expected to vote in person.
Conway said delaying the election or stopping in-person voting would preserve the state’s chances of escaping the outbreak with a “dull roar” of cases and not overwhelming the state’s health care system.
“If our local leaders say this is important enough to our community and state that we are willing to delay an election, that’s a powerful message,” he said.