MADISON - Gov. Tony Evers has agreed to use members of the Wisconsin Army National Guard to work at the polls during the April 7 election amid a massive shortage of poll workers that is leaving some communities without anyone to give voters ballots on Election Day.

More than 100 communities in Wisconsin don't have any poll workers for the spring election in six days and a record number of voters are overwhelming clerks with absentee ballots — leading to warnings that thousands of votes may not be counted.

"Governor Evers has agreed to use members of the Wisconsin Army National Guard to assist as poll workers, but it is anticipated that the assistance of the National Guard will not satisfy all of the current staffing needs," Assistant Attorney General Hannah Jurss wrote in a brief filed in a federal lawsuit seeking to postpone the eletion. "The National Guard is currently determining how many personnel it can make available for each county."

That was news to City of Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Neil Albrecht, who said Wednesday the city learned through media reports that the National Guard would be used at voting sites.

He said the city had made a request to the state 45 to 60 days ago to use the National Guard at polling places and had been told that wasn’t going to happen because members of the Guard needed to be available to respond anything else that could happen on that day.

“It’s a little ‘too little too late,’ really, to integrate members of the National Guard into the operations of our polling sites right now besides exercising, obviously, some good crowd management and enforcing of social distancing,” he said.

He said the city remains significantly short staffed on polling workers and the numbers are dwindling by the day.

Albrecht estimated that between 40,000 and 50,000 people could vote at the polls on Tuesday across the city, which means at least 3,000 people could be at each polling location after the ctiy reduced its sites from more than 100 to 10 or 12 because of the worker shortea

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Evers, through the Attorney General Josh Kaul's office, did not take a position in the lawsuit but offered information about the state's efforts to carry out the election. He also proposed ways to make it easier to vote and give clerks more time to count ballots.

Evers has said he wants all voters to receive an absentee ballot to be able to mail in their vote, and does not want to move the election.

Nearly 60% of Wisconsin municipalities are short on poll workers, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

They are short almost 7,000 poll workers, and election officials are worried even more won't show up on April 7 because of the coronavirus pandemic that is keeping people in their homes.

Nearly 1 million voters have asked for absentee ballots for the April 7 presidential primary and election for state Supreme Court and local offices. That surpasses the total number of early ballots cast — both by mail and in-person — in the 2016 presidential election.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission is allowing municipalities to consolidate polling places to reduce the number of locations they will need to sanitize. That practice will result in more people flocking to each location as health officials are telling people to stay away from one another.

According to the commission, clerks are worried people who pledge to work on April 7 will ultimately end up sick themselves or scared of getting the virus.

In Tuesday's brief, Evers suggested ways the federal judge could make it easier to achieve a mail-in election.

The governor asked the judge to consider suspending the state's photo ID requirement, making it easier for people who don't have a way to provide a photo copy of their identification to vote absentee.

He also asked the judge to extend the deadline to submit and receive an absentee ballot, and to suspend the state's requirement for absentee voters to have a witness sign their ballots given some voters live alone and the coronavirus outbreak has forced people to limit their interactions.

The governor also proposed allowing clerks to count ballots early and extend the deadline to do so to after the election to accommodate an extension to the deadline clerks must receive mail-in ballots.

Jurss wrote the measure would "help alleviate logistical concerns about the timely processing of an unprecedented volume of mail-in absentee ballots, and — as discussed further below — concerns about poll workers’ ability to perform their jobs while socially distancing."

Alison Dirr of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel contributed to this report.

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Contact Molly Beck at molly.beck@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @MollyBeck.