Politico: ‘It is terrifying’: Wisconsin leaders warn of coronavirus disaster with Tuesday’s vote

Voting-rights advocates are doing the unthinkable in Wisconsin: urging voters not to go to the polls on Tuesday.

The coronavirus epidemic has turned their calculations upside down in the state, where the federal government has declared a “major disaster,” Gov. Tony Evers has ordered residents to stay home — and in-person voting is still scheduled to take place Tuesday in the presidential primary and state and local elections, barring a last-minute intervention from the state Legislature, which Evers called into a Saturday special session.

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the state to expand absentee voting ahead of Tuesday’s elections, but he declined to postpone the election because he said he did not have the authority to do so. That has left a number of politicians and voting-rights advocates having to weigh a public health crisis colliding with a crisis of democracy — and they are coming down on the health side.

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who is running for reelection, urged voters not to go to the polls Tuesday, a call joined by some other local elected officials and activists. Jay Heck, director of Common Cause Wisconsin, a voting-rights group, likened the spring election to a cosmic calamity.

“The upcoming election is hurtling toward the state of Wisconsin like some unstoppable meteor,” said Heck. “It is terrifying, because nobody knows what’s going to happen.”