But crowds swarmed to the polls despite the state’s being under a stay-at-home order by Evers — a step taken to allow for social distancing in an attempt to blunt the spread of the virus that has wracked the nation, 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.”

As of Monday, Wisconsin had 2,440 confirmed cases of Covid-19, the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus. The death toll of the virus nationwide continues to soar, with federal health officials warning that the next few weeks, which they say are critical, will be grim.

Still, social media was flooded with photos and videos of the long lines outside of polling places, and news outlets aired footage showing some voters wearing masks, with most 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 with the Fight for $15 minimum-wage movement, told POLITICO. Gardner said she got to her new polling place about 20 minutes before polls opened and was able to leave about an hour and 20 minutes later.

When she arrived, she said, it wasn’t “crazy crowded, [but] there was a nice amount of people” at the polling place. Voters were adhering to social distancing as best as they could, said Gardner, who added that she wore masks and gloves to go vote.

“I took the risk because it is my right, and I want to try to make something better for future generations,” she said. “This will definitely be a story that my kids are telling their children about, my grandkids. … This will be something in history.”

More concerning to Gardner were some elderly voters, who she said did not have masks on, or others in her family. Gardner said her niece requested an absentee ballot but had not received it, and she was unsure whether her niece would now be able to vote. “You’re risking yourself both ways,” she said. “Either with the health scare or not being able to vote at all.”

The crowding was only exacerbated by the closure of polling places throughout Wisconsin. In Milwaukee, for example, the number of open polling locations in the state’s most populous city has been slashed to five, from 180.

In an effort to staff polling places, Wisconsin’s elections commission announced that 2,400 members of the state National Guard would serve as poll workers, and encouraged voters to try to head to the polls during “off-peak hours” when crowds might be smaller.

Democrats and activists have accused the state GOP of voter suppression. “And what better way to suppress the vote than to require people to have in-person voting in a situation like this,” Barrett said.

The state Republican Party dismissed those allegations on Tuesday.

“Cities that have long waiting times to vote could have opened a sufficient number of locations to prevent long lines,” the party posted on its Twitter account on Tuesday afternoon, instead placing the blame on local officials.

“Local elected officials and election planners need to answer to their constituents as to why they’ve chosen not to use resources at their disposal when the vast majority of polling locations across the state are running smoothly,” the party argued.

Barrett said the city still had to tap National Guard personnel to serve as poll workers, even with the limited number of polling places. He was among the Wisconsin mayors who had urged Evers to call for a delay in Tuesday’s elections. It was a move Evers did not take until last Friday.

“The first case in Milwaukee County was on March 13, so 24 days ago,” Barrett said. “Do I think he could have acted a little earlier? Of course he could have acted a little earlier. Am I pleased that he acted? I’m very pleased that he acted. The Republicans, if they cared, could have responded.”

Other municipalities are faring better than Milwaukee. The state election board said in a mid-afternoon update that it had not received any reports of “major problems,“ but that “lines have been long in Milwaukee and some other places.“

In Madison, which has more than two-thirds of its usual 92 polling places still open in a city with less than half the population of Milwaukee’s, there have been few lines. The city has also instituted extra security measures, like curbside voting and Plexiglas shields between voters and poll workers.

“I think everyone across the country should be paying attention to what happened in Wisconsin today," Madison‘s mayor, Satya Rhodes-Conway, said in an interview. “The experience in Madison, while generally positive, is certainly not ideal. But if you look around the state, you could call it a disaster.“

“It is patently unfair that people who live in different cities have different voting experiences,“ she added, saying that she believed the election should have been postponed. Madison had to recruit about 1,400 replacement poll workers, she said, something that isn‘t possible in every city.

The elections Tuesday — featuring both the Democratic presidential primary contest between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, along with a state Supreme Court race and hundreds of local general elections — have seen a surge of absentee-ballot voting, as officials for weeks have warned about the threat of the coronavirus.

As of Tuesday morning, a bit under 1.3 million absentee ballots had been sent out, according to the Wisconsin Election Commission, with roughly 10,000 fewer ballots sent than were requested. However, just because a ballot was sent out doesn’t mean that it was received or returned by individual voters. So far, 865,000 ballots have been returned.

But Monday night's ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court is sure to inject more confusion into the absentee-voting process.

While Wisconsin law typically requires that ballots must be received by 8 p.m. on Election Day, the justices overturned a District Court ruling from last week ordering that ballots received by 4 p.m. on April 13 would count, regardless of when they were postmarked.

After Monday’s ruling, absentee ballots must be postmarked by April 7 and received by 4 p.m. on April 13 to count.

Marcelia Nicholson, a Milwaukee County Democratic supervisor who told POLITICO last week that asking voters to go to the polls is “akin to telling them to go vote in a hurricane,” said she had still not received her absentee ballot despite the fact she requested one in March.

Nicholson, who is on the ballot but is running uncontested, said she was waiting to see whether the ballot came in the mail today and, if not, she would head to the polls.

“I was certain if I was having trouble — someone like me with a lot of information — navigating this, then I’m sure many others are, too,” she said on Tuesday. She said she now “can’t tell a constituent or anyone else to risk their lives and cast their votes” in person.

Jesse Pokora, an Army veteran living in Milwaukee who spoke to POLITICO, said he also requested an absentee ballot but had not received one. Ultimately, he decided he would not vote in-person.

The state legislature “callously put us in danger, which is enraging,“ he said. “People are going to die because they had to vote today. That’s a story that’s going to be in our memories for years to come.“