Thousands of voters are expected to go to ballot boxes in Wisconsin Tuesday, near a time that the coronavirus pandemic in Wisconsin is expected to reach a forecasted peak.
21 hours before the polls were set to open in Wisconsin, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett is imploring the Republican-controlled state legislature to delay the end of the Wisconsin spring presidential primary and local general election.
“At this moment, it’s not too late to do the right thing,” said Mayor Barrett on the Steve Scaffidi Show.
“You’re going to have more spread by having more people exposed. It’s a pandemic…for legislatures to think ‘It’s not going to apply to us,’ what planet are you from?”
Democratic Governor Tony Evers called Friday for the election to be delayed until late May, and asked the legislature to hold a special session Saturday to take up a vote to delay that election.
Both the Assembly and Senate started the session and immediately ended it without a vote.
Barrett addressed criticisms that Governor Evers acted too late to address the issue, expressing how even he had agreed with keeping the election date as it was…until last week.
“My big change of heart occurred last Sunday, eight days ago, when my election commissioner informed me we did not have the workers to man the early voting sites,” said Barrett.
“These are people who get paid a minimal amount…that is when I realized ‘We’ve got a big problem mhere.’ When the Governor and I put down the edicts of ‘Stay at home,’ we were losing workers by the hour.”
Barrett’s greatest fear is the large level of voters who will be congregating in five voting locations (instead of 180 due to the loss of poll workers) will lead to dangerous situations for voters, as the virus could quickly spread.
“You couple that with how I believe Wisconsin’s election tomorrow is going to be the largest public event in the United States in the month of April. Everything else has been canceled.”
Barrett explained that the election has already started, but the issue is about when it ends.
“The issue is how, and when, do you end voting. That’s where having in-person voting tomorrow is obviously, from a public health perspective, a very bad idea, for the workers and the public,” he said.
“Allow people to mail in their ballots, because we do want people to have voices heard.”
