But clerks still waiting for the shipments have been using an email list run by the Wisconsin Municipal Clerks Association to share tips and do-it-yourself solutions for making polling locations safer. Some locations have procured sheets of plexiglass: propped up vertically between two card tables, they can serve as a sneeze and cough guard for workers.

Shellie Benish, a clerk from the village of Black Earth, has proposed using plastic wrap to wrap some voting booths, laying it down on a surface where people fill out ballots and then discarding it afterward. And for early voting, she has been utilizing her office’s glass door.

“If someone does come in, we do not let them in,” she said. “We talk to them through the door. We have a table outside with the ballots. They fill it out, and then they slide it in underneath the door so that there’s no contact. We’re keeping that distancing, keeping our staff safe. We only have two in my front office, and they’re well over 60.”

Cathy Hasslinger, a clerk from Dunn, said she had been training her staff to follow state guidelines for a kind of safe-distance “dance” of checking identification and signing poll books. With taped markings on the floor, voters take two steps to the table, place their ID down, and take two steps back. Then a poll worker, standing two steps away on the other side of the table, approaches and picks up the ID for verification. This two-step continues for the whole voting process.

“We will be limiting contact, using hand sanitizer and doing our best, but there will be mistakes,” Ms. Hasslinger said. “The voters will follow instructions 90 percent of the time, but it will not have perfect compliance.”