Milwaukee sees 4 percent in-person turnout, 2 hour waits to cast votes in Tuesday's primary

Milwakee voters.
(Image credit: KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

Tuesday's primary vote in Wisconsin went about as well as expected, considering it happened during a global pandemic.

Despite a last-ditch effort from Gov. Tony Evers (D), the state's presidential primary and state Supreme Court election still went on Tuesday amid a statewide stay-at-home order due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It translated into hours-long waits to vote in socially distant lines and dismal in-person turnouts, but a huge rise in absentee ballot returns, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

In Milwaukee, home to about 467,000 voting-age adults, just 18,803 people showed up to vote at the city's five remaining polling places — a 4 percent turnout. Usually the city has 180 polling locations, so people ended up waiting anywhere from an hour and a half to two hours just to vote. In Green Bay, wait times to vote even reached three hours.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Wisconsin's board of elections did report more than a million absentee ballots have been returned as of Wednesday morning. The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled absentee ballots had to be mailed by Tuesday despite Evers pushing for an extension. However, many people who'd requested absentee ballots more than two weeks ago hadn't received them as of Tuesday morning, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

Wisconsin's GOP-run state legislature had the power to postpone Tuesday's election, and last Friday, Evers called them into a special session and then ordered the election postponed. But the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 Monday night to let the election proceed, saying mail-in ballots should make up for any in-person voting problems.

Explore More

Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.