'A very sad situation for voters': Milwaukeeans brave wait times as long as 2 1/2 hours, top election official says

Some Milwaukee voters are waiting in line for as long as 2 1/2 hours to cast their ballots, the city's top election official said Tuesday.

"We have moved forward with an election, but we have not moved forward with democracy in the state of Wisconsin," said Neil Albrecht, executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission.  

The city has only five voting centers that are open Tuesday, a dramatic drop from the 180 polling places that are typically open on election day. Albrecht said each of the five opened essentially on time, and added that National Guard members, Milwaukee police officers and Milwaukee Health Department staffers have been helping at the voting sites.

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But he acknowledged that the average wait time at each of those five locations was between 90 minutes and 2 hours.

Hundreds of people have called the Milwaukee Election Commission reporting that they never received their absentee ballots in the mail, Albrecht said. That includes elderly people who have never before missed voting in an election, he said.

“I think this is a very sad situation for voters in the city of Milwaukee and across the state,” Albrecht said.

The MyVote.wi.gov website and municipalities were not equipped to deal with the volume of absentee ballot requests they received, Albrecht said.

He added that another 750 absentee ballots are missing witness signatures and will not be counted. That number could increase as more ballots are submitted.

When it comes to reporting results, Albrecht said the city would only report the number of ballots cast, and has no plans to start reporting actual election results Tuesday night.

When asked why the city wasn't able to open more polling places with the help of the National Guard, Albrecht said he didn't know until yesterday exactly how many members would be able to help at Milwaukee's polling places. He added that the city ended up getting about 170 members.

"Had we had that information sooner, I absolutely think it could have influenced the number of voting centers," he said.

Contact Mary Spicuzza at (414) 224-2324 or mary.spicuzza@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @MSpicuzzaMJS.