Set aside for a moment your opinion about whether or not the Wisconsin April 7 election should have gone forward in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the statewide “safer at home” order.  Let’s talk about what happened in Milwaukee on election day.

Milwaukee is a city of approximately 600,000 people. Normally, there are 180 polling sites open with about 1,800 to 2,200 people working the polls.  Give or take, that’s about 10 workers per polling site.

On this election day, there were only about 400 or 450 election workers available. That should have afforded the city at least 40 polling sites. 150 National Guard members also assisted in Milwaukee.  From an article on the situation:

And yet, the city had FIVE (5) polling locations open. Five. There were more than 100 workers at each site. And people waited for HOURS to cast their votes.

Regardless of whether the election should have happened, it did. And those in leadership positions (like Neil Albrecht, the executive director of Milwaukee’s Election Commission) and those running the city in general had a responsibility to citizens to properly organize and run the polls. They could have easily had 20 to 30 voting locations available and still had twice the number of workers at each than normally work.