Oshkosh pandemic diary April 13: Local voting brings two new faces to Common Council

Winnebago County Health Department

This article has been updated to fix an incorrect comparison.
By Miles Maguire
Whether by mail or in person, Oshkosh voters managed to cast 26,544 votes for three Common Council seats, electing two new faces and returning one incumbent.

In an election conducted during a pandemic and amid concerns about voter suppression, the total number of votes was down sharply from the number, 38,571, Oshkosh citizens cast in 2016, during the last presidential election cycle.

The decline works out to about 31%. An earlier version of this story reported an increase in voting based on a mistaken comparison of total votes and total voters. In the council race, each voter could cast a ballot for up to three candidates.

The beneficiaries of this year's voting in Oshkosh were incumbent Matt Mugeraurer and challengers Lynnsey Erickson, a community health strategist for the Winnebago County Health Department, and Mike Ford, an associate professor of public administration at UW Oshkosh. 

Erickson received 5,890 votes, Mugeraurer 5,637 and Ford 4,670.

Bill Miller, who was selected to fill a vacancy a year ago by a vote of the council, came in fourth with 4,548 votes.

In the other local election Bob Poeschl and Barbara Herzog retained their seats on the board of the Oshkosh Area School District.

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For the second day in a row, the local count of positive COVID-19 tests went up by two, the Winnebago County Health Department said Monday afternoon. The total now stands at 28.

Separately the Wisconsin Department of Health Services reported a statewide increase of 87 cases to a total of 3,428. The number of Wisconsin residents who have died from COVID-19 rose by 10 to 154 as of Monday afternoon, DHS said.