Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson announced shortly before midnight that issues had arisen during the downloading of absentee ballots at the City of Milwaukee’s Central Count, further delaying the closely watched results of Wisconsin’s Democratic primary for governor.
Paulina Gutiérrez, executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, identified the issue as “human error.” Gutiérrez later clarified that the “wrong button was pressed.”
According to Gutiérrez, five of the nine USB sticks used to download the election results of tabulators did not contain the results and only had the audit logs before the absentee ballots were transported to the Milwaukee County Election Commission.
She said were no issues with the machines, but the sticks used to download the information.
The city election officials returned to the Central Count location in Milwaukee’s Bay View neighborhood where absentee ballots are processed, to re-download the correct results.
“We’re going to reprint and start the process so that we can compare those results,” she said.
Once that is done, the re-downloaded results will be sent back to the Milwaukee County Election Commission at the county courthouse.
Christenson estimated that this delay will push back the final tallies by roughly an hour.
Roughly 11,000 absentee ballots from the city were counted, with 15,000 outstanding absenee ballots still needing to be counted once the USB sticks are returned, according to Christenson.
“Elections are a bedrock of democracy. The City of Milwaukee’s highest priority during an election is the accuracy of our vote count,” Nick DeSiato, chief of staff for Mayor Cavalier Johnson, said in a text message to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel shortly after the issues were reported.
“The Milwaukee Election Commission has been and will continue to be transparent with its processes. This also serves as a timely reminder that our state Legislature needs to revisit the ability to early process absentee votes.”
“There are also many layers to election security and accountability to ensure that the vote count is accurate,” he added.
(This story was updated to add new information.)
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Download error in Milwaukee delays final results in Wisconsin primary election
Reporting by Vanessa Swales, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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By Vanessa Swales, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | USA TODAY Network
