GREEN BAY, Wis (NBC 26) -- Tuesday's election across the state presented a unique set of issues for every community. But Green Bay citizens endured some of the worst of it with voters waiting up to three and a half hours just to cast their ballot... Tonight the Mayor of Green Bay spoke about what went wrong and what can be learned from the situation.
Embracing your right to vote. or staying at home to avoid COVID 19, these were the choices for many Wisconsinites who didn't file for an absentee ballot.
"It was something that we feared and unfortunately it came to fruition on Tuesday," says Eric Genrich, Green Bay's Mayor
Mayor Genrich says an estimated 2,600 Green Bay voters took the potential risk, of showing up in person to the polls on Tuesday.
"I do of course want to thank everybody and apologize to everybody who had to participate in the election that way."
In a typical election year, Green Bay has 31 poll sites across the city. But in the days prior to the April election, that number dropped down to just two. And as the poll site numbers dropped, so did the number of the city's estimated 270 poll workers, Genrich says on Tuesday they only had about 15.
"So we're going to learn from this experience. We're going to work with our staff officials hopefully on some policy changes to recognize the fact of how difficult it is to administer an election during a pandemic."
What some communities in Brown county did to help keep polling sites open and prevent lines from forming, was bring in some additional help from the National Guard. Mayor Genrich says the opportunity to utilize the help though, came in too late.
"We didn't hear until very late exactly what their capabilities were, what they could do."
Brown county's clerk, Sandy Juno says nearly 50 guard members were on call Tuesday to assist Green Bay, but the call for help never came.
"I just think it's important for them to do a self-evaluation," says Juno.
And while nothing can be done today to fix what went wrong in the past, moving forward Green Bay's mayor says they would consider utilizing the National Guard in the future.
"Looking forward if we're still in the midst of a COVID 19 outbreak or pandemic in August or November, I think we'd have a much better shot of trying to figure out how we might be able to use the National Guard for this purpose."
Mayor Genrich adds that his city clerk was under a tremendous amount of pressure leading up to the election because of the number of absentee ballots coming in. Genrich says that contributed to their decision not to utilize the National Guard because as he puts it, they didn't have any time to train poll workers from the National Guard.
