Legal challenges began brewing even before the polls closed as voters complained they were forced to show up in person after their request for absentee ballots went unfulfilled. Democrats complained that predominantly minority areas, including parts of Milwaukee, were among those hit hardest by poll closures, and charged that Republicans forced the election as a way to suppress the vote in the most Democratic parts of the state.

“So many people across Wisconsin faced the impossible choice of casting their ballots and protecting themselves and their families. That’s a choice that no one should have to make,” Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler said. “I think whatever the thought is of what Republican leadership did today, it’s going to change significantly in retrospect when people learn they were exposed to coronavirus at polling places. Weeks and months from now, this will be a completely different conversation."

Wikler added that he’d be surprised if the courts didn’t see a “firestorm of litigation” as a result of an election that took place despite a last-ditch effort by Gov. Tony Evers to postpone in-person voting until June.

In addition to the presidential primary, hundreds of local nonpartisan elections were on the ballot, as well as Wisconsin’s most rancorous election — a state Supreme Court seat that was fiercely contested between Democrats and Republicans.

The outcome won’t be known for some time. Election results will not be announced until April 13, after 4 p.m. CDT, because of a federal court order preventing the results from being released before then.

Absentee ballots that are postmarked by Election Day and received by clerks before that April 13 deadline will be counted. In Wisconsin, ballots typically must be received by 8 p.m. Election Day, regardless of when they were postmarked.

According to the most recent numbers released from the state election commission, 990,000 absentee ballots have been returned and logged as of 8 p.m. CDT on Tuesday, of the nearly 1.3 million ballots requested.

Wisconsin drew national attention for the dumbfounding decision to move forward with an in-person election. As the country battled a rising body count due to coronavirus, the state government sanctioned an event that placed thousands of people in the same space at one time — despite having a statewide shelter-in-place order in effect.

A similar contradiction played out at the White House on Tuesday, where a president who advocated social distancing and stay-at-home orders, supported the Republican-led effort to hold in-person voting and sharply criticized voting by mail practices.

“Mail ballots are a very dangerous thing for this country because they're cheaters,” Donald Trump said at a White House briefing. “They go and collect them. They're fraudulent in many cases.”

Tuesday’s elections came on the heels of 24 hours of disarray that saw Evers, a Democrat, issue an executive order on Monday delaying in-person voting. The order was swiftly challenged by the Legislature, and the state Supreme Court blocked it on Monday evening. In a separate ruling, the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court reined in a lower-court ruling extending the deadline for absentee ballots.

Opponents argued that the decisions forced voters to make a choice between exercising their constitutional rights and safeguarding their health and the health of others in the face of a highly infectious and deadly outbreak.

But crowds swarmed to the polls, with some voters saying they had no other choice if they wanted to vote.

“What’s happening in Wisconsin today flies in the face of every pronouncement that we have heard in the last three weeks pertaining to public health,” Mayor Tom Barrett of Milwaukee said in an interview with POLITICO. “Every announcement about stay home, social distancing, stay away from people. There is no scientific exemption for voting when it comes to Covid-19, and to pretend that there is, is insanity.”

Still, social media was flooded with photos and videos of the long lines outside of polling places, with most voters leaving much more room than usual between them and the person in front.

“I was definitely going to go vote today, because people have fought for me to be able to vote,” Judy Gardner, a McDonald’s worker in Milwaukee who is involved in the Fight for $15 minimum-wage movement, told POLITICO.