GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – As Election Day continues, Green Bay Police are making their rounds near polling places to keep an eye on any potential issues.
Chief Andrew Smith says those patrols will be regularly rolling through, but they’re hoping to avoid making the day “too officious” to allow people to have a safe and normal voting experience.
However, they will respond to any concerns of electioneering.
“We did get one call earlier today where someone’s electioneering little too close to one of our polling locations one of our officers went by there asked him to move 100 feet away and they cooperated that was the end of that,” Smith said. “Our watch commander is equipped with tape measures that measure 100 feet so if that becomes the question is where the 100 foot line is will be happy to provide that answer for anybody that’s out there.”
Smith is also urging people to be cautious about believing misinformation that could be spreading on social media. Some posts already claim the city is moving voting machines to one central location, confusing that with the Central Count – which is tabulating results at the KI Convention Center.
“I did get an email from a retired police officer saying, ‘Hey, I heard the Central County was moved surreptitiously over to the KI Center.’ That’s baloney. We were planning on doing that a long time ago. That was announced publicly on the website. So that’s one little bit of disinformation that was out there,” Smith said. “There’s a little bit of disinformation out there. Often times during elections, or often times during times like this, people start putting things out on social media. Just don’t believe the stuff you read on social media until you verify it. If you have any questions, you can call the city clerk’s office, you can call us, the website the mayor talked about, myvote.wi.gov is an excellent resource.”
Smith suspects as the day goes on, more people will be getting fired up and posting things that they simply made up. He says to not believe everything you see on social media – and if you have a question, give the city clerk a call. If you have a problem, he says to give the police department a call. If it’s an emergency, call 911.
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