This is some good reporting form WBAY. We see that the failure to successfully execute the election was the result of the utter mismanagement by the Mayor and municipal leadership. There needs to be accountability for this.
“Unacceptable. To me that’s unacceptable,” said Sandy Juno, Brown County Clerk. “Clearly, the size of Green Bay only having two polling locations with one tabulator at each location was insufficient.”
Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich declined an interview with Action 2 News on Wednesday, but in a Facebook Post he wrote, “I want to stress that this was not an option we chose eagerly. In fact, it was our last resort. Our contingency plan, once first realizing a significant decline in available poll workers, involved the use of our four high school gyms. That number fell to two locations as the number of experienced and trained poll workers fell further.”
A city staff member told Action 2 News that over the past few weeks the city lost 85 percent of its experienced poll workers. In an effort to maintain safety, the staffer said they needed to consolidate and find locations big enough to allow social distancing.
When Action 2 News asked Juno if she had any control over Green Bay’s decision to only have two polling places, she said ‘no.’
[…]
Juno said the City of Green Bay could have had more help because she had about 50 National Guard members who could have helped out at the polling locations.
“On Sunday, I did talk to the mayor because I was looking for a site to dispatch the National Guard from on Monday. And he again reiterated that they did not need them and they did not want them,” said Juno.
Action 2 News asked Juno if she could force Green Bay to use the National Guard members and she said, ‘No. That is not under my control. That is a municipal function.”
Juno said she had 140 National Guard members available to dispatch in Brown County. Of those, she used 92. Juno said she had 48 that were on-call Tuesday.
[…]
“The failure yesterday was not because of COVID-19 because we had 1850 municipalities that successfully performed, all their elections went off with excellence. We had two that failed. (she is referring to the City of Milwaukee and City of Green Bay) That was not COVID 19 that was mismanagement of the election.”
There also was a failure in in leadership in Waukesha. Does there need to be accountability for this too?
“ Waukesha announced Monday that because it has lost so many poll workers to concerns about the virus, it would conduct election-day voting at one location instead of 13. That one location will be the city’s recreation center, a space large enough that officials believe it can provide the necessary social distancing.
Instead of the 300 or so volunteer poll workers the city might have for all its polling locations, it expects to have only about 40 to 50.
“Every day, I get more emails from people asking to pull out, which is totally understandable,” said Gina Kozlik, Waukesha’s clerk-treasurer.”
It depends Pat. If they still had 50 poll workers, I would assume that they had many voting booths and possibly the recreation center is large enough to be divided by different areas of the city.
Did Waukesha turn down the help of the National Guard?
It’s possible they screwed up and they should be held accountable.
Awful. Just awful.
The GB twit did not fail. He deliberately jacked it to facilitate lawsuits. So did Barrett.