Amid coronavirus outbreak, Wisconsin election still on for Tuesday despite stay home order and a massive poll worker shortage

Thousands of poll workers have said they won't work. Hundreds of voting locations have been consolidated. Tens of thousands of requests for mail-in absentee ballots are backlogged.

Wisconsin's voting system is teetering under the weight of the coronavirus pandemic, but Tuesday's election is still scheduled to go on as planned after Republican state legislative leaders, the Democratic governor and a federal judge have not taken action to postpone it.

Ballots will be cast even as Gov. Tony Evers has issued a "safer at home" order directing Wisconsinites only to venture outside for essential tasks such as seeking medical treatment, buying food and, apparently, voting.

"We are in an unprecedented moment, and the statutes and laws weren't written with a situation like this in mind," said Charles Franklin, a political science scholar and director of polling at the Marquette University Law School. "We have had a gigantic surge in request of absentee ballots - more than 1 million - and we have no idea at this moment how many of those will get sent out in time or how many people will show up in person on Tuesday to vote. This is uncharted water."

Barring any eleventh-hour changes, Wisconsin will soldier on at a time when 15 other states have either delayed their elections or switched them entirely to vote-by-mail with later deadlines.

But unlike many of those elections, Wisconsin's contest isn't just a presidential primary between former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. It is