As your Wisconsin twitter correspondent, this is an embarrassing day. We are in the middle of a global pandemic and our state has decided to proceed with our in-person elections.

Until now, I have been relatively impressed by our state and local officials to adapt to this crisis. They were relatively early in closing schools, churches, and bars. Don't underestimate how much pushback there could have been on that last one in Wisconsin...

The state banned evictions and foreclosures for 60 days. We prohibited the shutoff of electricity, water, and gas.

Our local government stepped up. The mayors of the largest cities in the state asked to delay the election. Many cities proactively put in place restrictions before state-wide ones were declared.

Our citizens have stepped up as well. I was overwhelmed by how much the community came together from neighbors organizing shopping trips, to grocery stores putting up one-way lanes and plexiglass, to the courteous nature of people walking in the street to keep our distance.

Our citizens stepped up. Our local governments stepped up. Our state government failed.

Couldn't people have voted with absentee ballots? The state received so many requests for ballots that it was overwhelmed and struggled to get them out. There are many, many cases of people requesting them, but not receiving them in time to complete.

You may be thinking: isn't this just a useless presidential primary where it doesn't matter if turnout is low? No. We have a number of significant races from State Supreme Court to a referendum to important County Execs and Mayors.

I have talked to many people on both sides of the aisle and they are all frustrated with how events proceeded. I was happy that our governor eventually took more drastic action yesterday, but it ended up being too late. Partisanship won out over public safety.

Earlier this evening, a firetruck and eventually two ambulances pulled up to my neighbors house. After coming out of his house, they returned back to their truck and put on extra PPE (garbage bags). This is the environment we have decided to have an election in.

As the pandemic continued on and the situation got worse in Wisconsin, many at-risk poll workers understandably backed out. This resulted in a significant shortage of workers resulting in many cities drastically cutting polling places.

Milwaukee has over 1,100 cases. The city of Milwaukee normally has 180 polling locations. Today they had 5 locations open for an estimated 50,000 voters. You can find many videos like this https://twitter.com/AsteadWesley/status/1247504386923933698

Scenes like this make me both sad and proud. It is sad that Wisconsinites are forced to risk their lives in order to exercise their right to vote. It makes me proud that that they do.

Our city was also very short on poll workers so my wife signed up. If it means one less at-risk person needs to be there, that is worth it. She took my mask, her mask, and a purse full of hand sanitizer. I couldn't be prouder of her.

I'd like to find a way to end this thread on a happy note, but I'm struggling. It is tough to imagine any way that people won't die as a result of the decisions made by my state today.

Still, I'm proud of our citizens and the work our local officials did to try to make today as safe as possible.