First Briefing

First Covid Briefing 

Residrnts Urged To Take Precautions 

The first item here is the first COVID-19 Daily Briefing provided to the common council. In it, we can already see what will become the lightning rod of Wisconsin's unique pandemic experience--the April 7 election. “The Election Commission is experiencing a significant level of attrition in poll workers with," the briefing notes, "at present – and this was expressed anecdotally rather than in numbers – poll workers leaving fasting than they can be trained.” 

In Milwaukee as is the case in most municipalities around this state polls are manned by volunteers. Mostly older adults who do it as a way to fill their desire for civic duty. I’ve worked many a year with these types of poll workers and they fully enjoy their assignments and Election Day. They look forward to them for months preparing and training. This year though with the threat of Covid-19 and it’s documented higher percentage of affecting the elderly those volunteers decided rightfully so to sit this one out. With the threat of low poll workers and being forced to consolidate polling places the mayor of Milwaukee started the ball rolling with asking that the spring election be switched to strictly absentee balloting or postponed to a later date. In Milwaukee because of the shortage of poll workers the entire city of over 240 polling sites was reduced to only 5.