The mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, urged voters to stay home and vote absentee rather than show up to the polls during the coronavirus outbreak.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers declined to follow the guidance of other states and postpone primary elections taking place on Tuesday. In a Wednesday interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Mayor Tom Barrett urged voters to stay away from polling stations to stop the spread of the virus.
“I don’t think that it’s good public policy, I think it’s dangerous during a pandemic,” Barrett explained. “And I hope that people do not go to the polls on Tuesday. As much as I want them to vote, I do not want them to put their lives in jeopardy, I don’t want them to put the health and safety of our poll workers in jeopardy.”
He added, “I want as many people as possible to get an absentee ballot and return an absentee ballot.”
Evers announced hours earlier that he would be deploying the Wisconsin Army National Guard to run polling stations after nearly 60% reported worker shortages during the pandemic. As of Thursday, Wisconsin had 1,573 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 28 related deaths.
Milwaukee is set to be the home of the Democratic National Convention in July. It is unclear if the coronavirus pandemic will interfere with the convention taking place as scheduled.
