The stakes are high for both parties: The ballot includes the presidential primaries, thousands of local offices and a competitive seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court itself.

“The state’s highest court has spoken: the governor can’t unilaterally move the date of the election,” Robin Vos, the speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly, and Scott Fitzgerald, the State Senate majority leader, who are both Republicans, said in a joint statement after the court’s decision.

The last-minute moves injected more chaos and confusion into an election already rife with legal challenges, court cases and public safety concerns. Some local officials worried on Monday that the whiplash could further depress turnout on Tuesday.

Would-be voters who requested but did not receive absentee ballots — a population as large as 12,000, officials said — will have no recourse but to trek to the polls Tuesday.

“If they haven’t got their ballot in the mail, they are going to have to go to the polling place tomorrow,” said Dean Knudson, a former Republican state legislator who serves as chairman of the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

Mr. Knudson, during a rollicking 1-hour-40-minute online session late Monday, said the commission had directed local municipal and county clerks who administer the state’s elections not to release results until next Monday afternoon.

“Instead of having Iowa-style results where no one knows what to expect, if we stick to this we’re going to have a clean election tomorrow but we’re not going to report the results until the following week,” he said.