Scenes From City’s Central Count

Election workers open and process absentee ballots at Milwaukee Central Count. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

After a late start, the Milwaukee Election Commission‘s central count operation was humming along by late Tuesday morning.

The operation, located in the exhibition hall at the Baird Center, calls for up to 300 election workers to open, sort, process and record more than 106,000 absentee ballots cast by city of Milwaukee voters.

The work, conducted under the watch of dozens of election observers, is expected to be finished after midnight.

“We’re doing great,” said MEC Executive Paulina Gutiérrez at a noon press conference. “No concerns here.”

Gutiérrez said she didn’t think the one-hour late start would impact the processing time and still predicts the process to be finished after midnight. She said the fact that the city must accept absentee ballots via USPS and in-person delivery until 8 p.m. prevents the process from finishing earlier. The city will close its drop boxes at 6 p.m., with a final pickup to occur shortly thereafter.

At the time of the press conference, she said approximately 4,000 ballots had been processed. That pace, she said, would accelerate as workers “get into a flow” with the process. Approximately 40 Wisconsin municipalities use central count facilities, often for staffing or security reasons, but none have the scale of Milwaukee.

“I’m still anticipating two or three o’clock in the morning. But it’s hard to tell,” said Gutiérrez of the time the results would be available. She said a better estimate could be provided at 5 p.m.

The election director said the longest process remains the formal import and export process from each of the machines. Gutiérrez and deputy Bonnie Chang will each lead a bipartisan team to export the information to USB drives on a machine-by-machine basis.

“That takes a long time to walk through these 13 machines and download that information. It gets secured in a bag, all in the public sphere, then transported under police escort to the Milwaukee County Courthouse,” Gutiérrez said. The Milwaukee County Election Commission will then import the data into its system, merging it with results from in-person voting and other municipalities.

As observed by Urban Milwaukee, work was interrupted sporadically for guidance over a loudspeaker system.

Chang instructed workers that early-voting envelopes lacking a witness signature are to be accepted. A city poll worker failed to sign the ballot, but based on electronic records the city would be able to identify who that individual should have been. She later told Urban Milwaukee that only a dozen such ballots had been identified.

Non-early voting absentee ballot envelopes without a witness signature or any envelope without a voter signature are to be rejected.

An additional challenge, flagged by Chang, is that workers must confirm that the ballot is for the November election and not the August primary, as a handful of voters are believed to have returned.

“Any ballot that does not meet the qualifying standards will not be counted, will not be opened,” said Gutiérrez.

The city is operating 180 polling locations for its more than 300 wards. “Things are going pretty well at the polling locations. What we’re seeing is long lines and a lot of activity,” she said.

The election director said there have been no issues with election observers.

Earlier in the day, Jefferson Davis, a frequent central count observer who previously promoted false claims about the 2020 election, could be overheard telling city officials that he didn’t want it getting out that the conservative observers were getting along with city officials.

“So far, so good,” said Gutiérrez.

In 2020, the results reported from Milwaukee’s central count proved the decisive figure in the election, giving Joe Biden the edge over Donald Trump. A similar situation could occur again in 2024, with a close race expected and more than 100,000 votes on hand.

The operation is attracting plenty of attention. A large media corral includes several international media members. Wisconsin Elections Commission board chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, was seen walking through the facility.

A four-camera live stream is available for anyone that wishes to watch the action.

Photos

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