Voting During COVID-19: Milwaukee's April 2020 Election

Wisconsin was the first state to hold an election with in-person voting after stay-at-home orders were issued. Its statewide primary on April 7, 2020, came less than two weeks after the "Safer at Home" order took effect on March 25. In the city of Milwaukee, election officials and the health department reshaped the vote to limit the spread of COVID-19 — and afterward, no clear jump in cases followed.

How the vote changed

Public messaging pushed absentee voting, and the city opened just five polling sites plus a central counting location, each supported by health department staff and the Wisconsin National Guard alongside nearly 500 poll workers and election inspectors. Measures followed CDC's interim guidance for polling places, published March 3, 2020, and went further.

Mail-in voting rose about fifteenfold. Even so, local news reported long waits at the polls on election day.

What happened next

COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths in Milwaukee, March 13–May 5, 2020. Credit: CDC, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

About 95 percent of people with COVID-19 develop symptoms 2 to 14 days after exposure, so anyone infected at the polls would have fallen ill between April 9 and 21. From March 13, when Milwaukee confirmed its first case, to May 5, the city recorded 2,789 cases, 642 hospitalizations and 137 deaths. Of the cases, 572 (21 percent) were reported during that April 9–21 window — and there was no clear increase in cases, hospitalizations or deaths after the election.

That suggests the mitigation measures — limiting in-person voting and making the open sites safe — may have helped, though lower turnout than in 2016 probably also played a part. The authors called the findings preliminary evidence that CDC's guidance lowers risk, and noted that following it fully — longer voting periods and more polling places, so fewer voters crowd indoors — could reduce risk further.

Sources

Based on "Notes from the Field: Public Health Efforts to Mitigate COVID-19 Transmission During the April 7, 2020, Election — City of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, March 13–May 5, 2020," by Heather Paradis and colleagues (City of Milwaukee Health Department; CDC), Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; a work of the United States government in the public domain.