Wisconsin Presidential Primary is set to take place on Tuesday amid coronavirus outbreak

Although the coronavirus pandemic has cancelled many events, Wisconsin still plans to hold its primary on Tuesday. Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman discusses on On The Move.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: I want to talk now about what is happening tomorrow in Wisconsin, that is, an election, which is not happening very many places these days. But Wisconsin, because it's holding election for a number of different offices, has decided to go ahead with it. Not just an election, but it's my understanding an in-person election.

So Rick Newman has been following that for us. And it seems like it's a mess from the sort of early planning and from what I've been reading. What does that tell us not just about Wisconsin, but what's going to happen on a national scale as we get closer and closer to November?

RICK NEWMAN: Preview of chaos, I guess Julie. The situation in Wisconsin, it is a bit unusual. So in order to change the voting date, it would actually require legislation. The governor can't just say, I hereby decree that we're changing the date of the election. And it's a Democratic governor in Wisconsin. He's been feuding with the Republican-controlled legislature since he took office, and they simply can't agree on what to do. The legislature there will not pass the law that would be needed to change the election date.

So it has to go forward. So in the meanwhile, the election authorities are trying to do things like dramatically increase voting by mail, trying to get absentee ballots out to everybody. But they're just not equipped for that. They don't have the staffing for that. And this is at a time when they have fewer workers because of the virus crisis.

And then one other problem is think about who election workers are. In many instances, they're retired volunteers. That's the older population, precisely the group of people that needs to stay out of harm's way and stay home right now. So we're looking at a situation where people could show up to vote, but there aren't enough poll workers, so there could be long lines. There could be some kind of breakdown in the system for getting the absentee ballots.

But the election is going forward because it has to. And I suspect we may not know who won by the end of the day tomorrow, It could take days or weeks. But Joe Biden is favored, for it's worth.

- Hey, Rick, I was curious. Can you have a nominating convention if not all of the states have been able to hold their primaries?

RICK NEWMAN: That's one I haven't looked into yet. And I guess-- I don't know. Probably not. But what the Democratic National Committee, which controls this, would have to do-- I mean, they are going to probably have to just change their rules. So if they end up not having a convention, a physical convention, and it's a remote or a virtual convention, in theory, the DNC can do that. But they do need to change their rules, which means a majority of the people who belong to the committee need to vote in favor of changing the rules.

So one would presume they would change the rules and find a way to get this all taken care of. You know, most of the states that have postponed their elections, they have bought themselves some time so that they can-- you know, most states do have absentee voting by mail. So they have the infrastructure for that in place, just not at the scale they might need with so many more people probably voting by mail. So at least buying time, you know, delaying an election for a couple of months, that at least gives you time to beef up the infrastructure for absentee voting and hope you get it right.

Wisconsin didn't have that advantage, so who knows. We could see a sort of a replay of the chaos in Iowa from earlier this year.

JULIE HYMAN: I also wanted to ask you, Rick, about sort of the political fallout from the whole coronavirus situation, and what each party has sort of made of it. I mean, one of the trends that's been noted is that the states that have not issued shelter in place orders happen to be run by Republican governors. I don't know if that's a coincidence or if that's part of the politicization of everything.

RICK NEWMAN: My own sense is it's not a coincidence, I think. So let's talk about Florida, for example, ands Georgia. I think those states, where the governors consider themselves close allies of President Trump, they've sort of been trying to follow Trump's head nods, if you will. I mean, Trump, obviously, is very reluctant to close anything. And he has only begrudgingly issued these stay at home guidelines through the end of April and so forth.

You know, some governors, like Andrew Cuomo here in New York, I mean, it's an open-ended shutdown here in New York. And Trump is still saying the national guidelines are through April 30. So I think in Florida and Georgia and some Republican states, we've seen governors kind of trying to walk the Trump walk. It may backfire on them because I mean, we're learning now the longer that you let people move around, the higher your infection rate goes exponentially higher because of the rate at which this virus replicates itself. And those states could just find themselves in shutdowns that last longer, and it'd take longer to reopen the economy.

JULIE HYMAN: All right. Thanks, Rick. I just wanted to bring everyone the latest numbers from New York State, which has been, of course, an epicenter of this outbreak. Governor Cuomo is giving his daily briefing. He says the state's total number of cases over the span of this thing is approaching 131,000. That's an increase from 122,000 day over day. The death count in New York state now over 4,700. That's an increase from about 4,100. He did, however, note that 74% of patients who are hospitalized are discharged.

At the same time, perhaps some encouraging news from Italy as well, which has now reported the lowest number of new virus infections in almost three weeks. This even as its total death count now has climbed to about 16,000 there in Italy.

We will keep you posted on all the latest. And we're going to talk about what's happening in the UK. Its prime minister has now been hospitalized. We'll be right back.