I live and vote in Wisconsin.
The polling place where I voted is the basement of a church. There were 3 elderly women checking people in and verifying their id - all sitting at the same 6’ folding table, none of them wearing gloves or masks. I gave them my drivers license, they passed it down the row of ledgers that have to be coordinated to prove there was no fraudulent votes and to prove that each of us is registered.
As I worked down the registration line, there were four other people standing at that 6’ table with me. All touching the same stuff, shoulder to shoulder, sometimes stepping around each other as our registration went faster, or had fewer questions.
Just like normal.
I was the only one wearing gloves. A couple of folks thought that was pretty funny.
At the end of the registration process, one of the poll workers coughed into her hand, then handed me my drivers license back with the same hand. Then she grabbed me a pen from a box and told that for safety this was my pen that no one else would use. She touched the voting audit ledger where I should sign. I thanked her, I signed, and kept the pen. She coughed into her hand again and again used the same hand to give me the slip of paper I was to take to the next station.
There were two people coordinating ballot assignments, standing at a table right at the end of the registration table. Each township and then each school district within the township (although some school districts extend into other townships) has it’s own ballot, with between 3 and 6 referendums and lots of local offices, and some people live in a different township than their school district. Plus the state is so gerrymandered now that two of my immediate neighbors are in different districts for one set of representation, but a different district for other kinds of representation. Like, I have to drive a half mile to get to the next person who is actually in my district. I live in one township, but my school district is in a different township, and I vote in a third with a fourth state legislative district, but a different federal level district. So getting the right ballot to the right person is non-trivial.
While I was there three people had to re-vote because they ended up with the wrong set of ballots. Lots of handling paperwork. Lots of ballots being handed to people, returned to the pile, given to someone else, etc.
I was handed three different ballots before I got the right one.
Then you get your pens for marking the ballot. These are special pens so they only have 10 of them and we have to reuse them. I was asked to take a pen from a coffee cup and use it to vote and then return it to a differnt cup when I was done so it could be sprayed with Lysol, so there was at least that nod to the coronavirus.
Then there’s a person who coordinates people get into the voting booths, often putting a comforting hand on the shoulder of people as they lead them to one of the three shoulder-to-shoulder curtained stalls for paper ballots, or to the person helping run the electronic voting machine.
There was also a member of the national guard unpacking the safety supplies that they had only just received - at 2 in the afternoon. They looked very much like the kits that hospitals give nurses at the beginning of their shifts - brown bags with the usual “CONTENTS: 1 (one) MASK 2 (two) LATEX GLOVE” etc. I bet those would have been good to have had earlier this morning.
All told, I counted 36 people in that one room in the church’s basement, which I’m guessing was no more than 25’ on a side. So there was no social distancing at all.
My voter number was in the hundreds, so a lot of people had already been through there, touching all the same stuff.
I and one poll worker were the only ones wearing gloves or masks.
The only thing being wiped between uses was the touch plate of the voting machine itself, with what appeared to be a KimWipe on its hundredth re-use, and the 10 ballot pens.
On the way out, one of my neighbors scolded me for “scaring people” by wearing rubber gloves.
The pen isn’t bad. It’s a PaperMate Write Bros. 1.0
I also got an “I Voted” sticker.
I hope that’s all I picked up while I was there.
