Mr. Wikler said that the Republicans had been seeking to stick to the April 7 in-person election date to ensure low turnout, which, he said, would be a potential boon to Mr. Kelly, the conservative judge up for re-election. “I think it creates a perceived opportunity, even if the public health consequences are ghastly,” Mr. Wikler said.
He later tweeted that the Supreme Court decision would “consign an unknown number of Wisconsinites to their deaths.”
In interviews, Republican county leaders largely played down the threat of the coronavirus. Facebook pages for one county urged residents to vote Tuesday in an important State Supreme Court election, saying “the Left is up to their Lawlessness and corrupt tactics to disrupt and turn the election.”
Republicans portrayed Mr. Evers’s move as politically motivated.
“I think this is a last-ditch effort to change the results,” said Jim Miller, the Republican county chairman in Sawyer County. “People will think it’s been moved until June. Even if it does go on, I don’t know how we put this back in the bottle.”
Even some Democrats on Monday were uncertain whether the governor, whose office was stripped of considerable power by the Republican Legislature, would win the legal fight.
In an interview earlier, Mayor Tom Barrett of Milwaukee would not directly say whether he felt the city’s residents should vote Tuesday. Mr. Barrett said holding an election under such circumstances went against “every tenet of public health,” but he also wanted people to participate. He never mentioned the possibility that the governor could use emergency powers to move the election.
Early voters in his city had been proceeding apace. On Sunday, Isral DeBruin, a communications professional, was sitting in his Honda Accord, snaking his way in a line of cars to a poll worker, wearing a mask and gloves and holding a clipboard, who oversaw an early-voting drive-through station. Mr. DeBruin’s absentee ballot had not come yet in the mail, and with all the wrangling over the deadline, he decided to brave the viral elements and vote by car.
“Nobody should have to do this,” he said. “I have no doubt there will be people who are disenfranchised because of this complete mishandling of democracy. Others will get sick. Some will die.”