The coronavirus pandemic is making it much harder to hold any sort of day-of in-person election, and the City of Milwaukee will be struck hard by that reality for the April 7 presidential primary and local general election.
Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Neil Albrecht says that 10 to 12, and possibly fewer, voting sites will have polls open instead of the normal 180 for Election Day.
A shortage of available workers (about 400, a much smaller percentage than normal) due to concerns about coronavirus is leading to the move, Albrecht said.
“We will be going toward a model of voting centers, a consolidation of voting sites. That consolidation will occur and could even involve combining aldermanic districts. That will bring a lot of people to a single site. We’re very concerned about that in terms of the community gathering…but at this point by state law, we have to make some sort of in-person available,” he explained.
“We are hoping later this week to announce those sites and push that information out to the public as rapidly as possible.”
With an expected 90,000 or more absentee ballots, it is not expected that results would be finalized until days after the election.