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When Quinn Blackshere woke up on Tuesday morning in Wisconsin, she lay in bed thinking about her options on Election Day: "Stay home and feel defeated, or go out, make my voice heard, and potentially contract a horrible virus."



With news of the coronavirus pandemic and a statewide safer-at-home order already heightening her anxiety, it was not an ideal situation to be in. "I was very frustrated," Blackshere, a 27-year-old freelance illustrator in Milwaukee, told BuzzFeed News.

She arrived at Riverside High School when polls opened at 7 a.m. The line was already far longer than she expected.

During any other time, the sight of voters waiting for hours to cast their ballots might merely have been infuriating, rather than terrifying. But as Wisconsin residents went out to vote in the primary with fears of the coronavirus outbreak hanging over them, the lines outside polling places were clouded by a tinge of panic.

Wisconsin is the only state to hold in-person voting in April, a month that public health experts say is crucial to flattening the curve on COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Several states, including Wisconsin, are expecting to hit their peak in COVID-19 cases in April.



US surgeon general Jerome Adams urged Wisconsinites to vote "as safely as possible" in an interview on Today on Tuesday morning.

"I say as a black man that I know that people have died for the right to vote. This is very important to our entire country, and if people are going to go out there and vote, please do it as safely as possible," he said, advising voters to stay 6 feet apart and wear a face covering.

Voters like Blackshere wore masks and gloves, and tried to practice social distancing — or as much of that as possible in a moving line — while waiting to perform their civic duty.



But it was tough to keep a distance, Blackshere said. They tried to stay at least 3 feet away from each other, and there was less even space between people where the lines turned.