By Dee J. Hall, Wisconsin Watch
Election Day is usually a long one for poll workers, stretching far beyond voting hours, which run from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Brook Soltvedt has worked the polls in Madison for at least 13 years. But today’s election is the first to coincide with a pandemic.
So Soltvedt, a chief election inspector, went to extremes to get ready, even as Democratic Gov. Tony Evers on Monday briefly suspended Tuesday’s in-person voting — a move that was quickly overturned after Republicans appealed it to the conservative-leaning Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Head-spinning rules changes
That 4-2 vote wasn’t the first or even the final time the courts changed today’s state voting rules. A series of recent decisions has triggered head-spinning changes to those rules and on Monday evening, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that absentee ballots must be postmarked by Election Day.
That 5-4 vote, along predictable conservative-liberal lines, overturned a federal judge’s six-day extension of the postmark deadline for the record 1.2 million-plus absentee ballots requested statewide. Some voters reported Monday that they still had not gotten absentee ballots requested weeks ago.
Earlier, the requirement that a witness sign absentee ballots cast during Gov. Tony Evers’ statewide “Safer at Home” order was relaxed — then reinstated.
Soltvedt, a 60-year-old textbook editor who is vice president of the League of Women Voters of Dane County, wonders what will happen to the ballots already cast without a witness signature.
“Are they allowed to get a fresh ballot?” she asked. “And if so, how would that happen?”
Preparations for working at the polls
In preparation for working at the polls today, Soltvedt has isolated herself for more than two weeks to minimize exposure to the coronavirus. And after managing the polling site at Thoreau Elementary School on Madison’s near West Side, she plans to quarantine for two more weeks to avoid making her 77-year-old husband, Dave Nelson, sick.
“When I get home Tuesday night, I’m going to strip in the garage, put my clothes in the washer and go downstairs for two weeks,” Soltvedt said.
Because so many workers have declined to participate out of fear of the pandemic, the Madison City Clerk’s Office consolidated many of its polling places — a trend also playing out in other Wisconsin cities.
Thoreau Elementary will serve nearby voters from Soltvedt’s toney Nakoma neighborhood as well as residents of Allied Drive, a low-income area where people who lack cars would have a circuitous bus ride to the polling place.
Clerk’s office staff called heroes
Soltvedt praised staff from the clerk’s office as “heroes” for taking “extraordinary” measures to keep poll workers and voters safe and ensure votes are counted.
Those steps include providing gloves and plastic face shields for poll workers, some of whom will sit behind plexiglass shields fashioned by the city’s Engineering Department to separate them from voters. And everyone will receive hand sanitizer.
Voters may also use their own black or blue pens, rather than those handled by others and sanitized by poll workers. And Soltvedt expects a lot of people would choose curbside voting, which allows them to complete ballots in their vehicles or outside the school.
“I really feel confident that the city has done about the best that they can do to have this be a — well, I can’t say a safe election,” Soltvedt said Monday. “It’s not going to be a safe election. People are going to get sick from this.
Evers cites voter fear
The governor, in announcing his executive order, stressed fear rather than health or confusion.
“They (voters) are just scared right now,” Evers said. “They want a governor of the state to stand up for them — that’s what I’m doing.”
Evers, in his response to the Republicans’ lawsuit, said “the COVID-19 virus has turned the polling place itself into a life-threatening danger.”
Election is ‘totally flying blind’
Besides transmission of the virus, Soltvedt’s main worry is widespread voter confusion.
Soltvedt described this 2020 election — with its ever-changing rules overlaid by fears of a deadly pandemic — as “totally flying blind.” She said Tuesday’s voting will not be the end of it.
“This whole election,” Soltvedt said, “is going to get litigated to kingdom come.”
Note: all photos accompanying this article, except the one of Gov. Evers, were taken by Dee J. Hall of Wisconsin Watch. The home page photo shows Amy Lampe, a Madison Fire Department inspector, collecting ballots from voters who drove up to the City-County Building there on Apr. 1.
The nonprofit Wisconsin Watch (wisconsinwatch.org) collaborates with Wisconsin Public Radio, PBS Wisconsin, other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.