By Caleb Rose for WisPolitics
MILWAUKEE — City officials brought in around 30 to 40 firefighters, health workers and IT employees to help run about 31,000 absentee ballots back through tabulators after a failure to securing the machines forced Milwaukee to start the counting process over.
U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson and Wisconsin Republican Party Chair Brian Schimming showed up about 7:30 p.m. and walked around. Johnson said, “This seems like a real mess.” Schimming followed with, “This goes down under the rule, you had one job.”
Johnson said Milwaukee “obviously wasn’t” ready for Election Day, calling it “sloppy.”
“In the year 2024 we can’t count ballots as fast as we were able to in the 1960s? This is ridiculous,” Johnson said.
The two were escorted by Elections Commission Executive Director Paulina Gutierrez and had the opportunity to look at ballot machines and ask questions. Johnson asked Gutierrez to preserve the records of the counted ballots, which Gutierrez said they already had. Johnson said the RNC lawyers will have a look at the records.
Gutierrez at a press conference later pushed back on Johnson’s criticism.
She said the machines were examined and resealed by a bipartisan group.
“They have it tracked, they attested to it along with the tabulators,” Gutierrez said.
“When we saw an issue that was brought to our attention, we reacted swiftly, and we acted transparently,” Gutierrez said. “There has been nothing to hide here.”
Schimming brought up the circulation of a picture via Getty Images which showed the sealing door open wide.
City spokesperson Caroline Reinfeld said the picture was taken after the issue was already identified and they were in the process of fixing the problem.
Johnson and Schimming later inspected the machines and asked questions about the seal.
City officials said tabulators at the central county facility, where all of Milwaukee’s absentee ballots are processed, were zeroed out this morning and sealed. But election workers failed to lock the panel, which covers a piece of the machine where memory sticks are plugged in to collect the results.
The city restarted the process of counting the 31,000 ballots that had already been fed through the machines after discovering the issue.
With the delay in counting ballots, Reinwald said that the results will see a lag, likely into the early morning hours.
As of 6:30 p.m., the city had received 107,914 ballots and processed 43,342. The polls closed at 8 p.m., the deadline for voters to return their absentee ballots to clerks.
