Sen. Ron Johnson Appears at Milwaukee’s Central Count, Calls It ‘Unbelievably Sloppy’

Sen. Ron Johnson (center) inspects a log book while MEC executive director Paulina Gutierrez highlights relevant areas. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

U.S. Senator Ron Johnson had harsh words for what he observed at the City of Milwaukee’s central count operation at the Baird Center.

“This was grotesquely disorganized. This is a swing state in maybe the most important election of our lifetime,” he said. “This is just unbelievably sloppy.”

Johnson appeared alongside Republican Party of Wisconsin chairman Brian Schimming a few hours after the city announced it would restart processing ballots due to the discovery of improperly locked tabulators.

The city announced it would take time to re-scan 31,000 ballots out of an “abundance of caution and to ensure the American public that this election is going to be run safe, secure and transparent.”

The senator insisted that it’s the opposite of what is happening.

“We’re not here today because there was no problems today,” said Johnson. “We’re here because there was a tab open on 13 machines that count ballots.”

Johnson insisted he would be satisfied if the city could produce the actual results from the 31,000 initially scanned ballots and it matched the results when they were rescanned.

A city spokesperson said the city has the number of ballots processed, but does not export the race results until the process is completed. Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Paulina Gutiérrez told the media Monday that the machines are deliberately designed not to show the totals until the final export.

“If they don’t even have the numbers. I get suspicious. If they don’t match, I get pretty suspicious too,” said Johnson.

But city officials insisted the paper ballots themselves exist and could be used to confirm the results. “There is a chain of custody,” said Gutierrez. “There is a paper trail for each ward.” She said not having immediate access to results in the tabulator is part of the security process.

Johnson, who toured the site while flanked by a gaggle of media members and observers, said he also wants to see full video footage that is being recorded. “They show nothing, that will heighten my level of confidence,” he said.

Johnson spent much of his time being shown the site by commission member Douglas Haag, the lone Republican. But he also talked with Gutierrez.

“That was not a very cordial exchange. It just wasn’t. I was trying to be as nice as possible,” said Johnson. “I wish Paulina would have been a little more open to answering my questions.”

What does Gutierrez think? “Senator Johnson and I both love America,” she told Urban Milwaukee.

Johnson said he continues to support legislation that would allow Wisconsin to process absentee ballots before election. The Republican-controlled Wisconsin State Senate let a bipartisan bill fail in February that would have allowed some early processing. “I think we should do that,” said the senator.

But he said he also thinks technology exists to speed up the process. Workers, as election clerks have repeatedly explained, spend much of their shifts reviewing signatures on ballots, opening ballots, flattening ballots and sorting the ballots.

Even before the restart, Gutierrez was predicting it would take until after midnight to complete processing the city’s 108,000 absentee ballots.

Johnson also said he supports overhauling election worker hiring processes to require an even number of Republican and Democratic affiliated workers.

Before Johnson could finish doing a round of television interviews, city officials announced they had completed processing 63,986 ballots by 8 p.m.

That total climbed to approximately 80,000 just before 10 p.m. “We’re doing pretty well,” said Gutierrez. “We’re at a good pace.”

The city received 108,325 ballots back before polls closed. It issued more than 113,000 absentee ballots.

Mayor Cavalier Johnson appeared around the same time the senator was leaving.

“From what I understand it was a simple human error, an error that was caught and the election commission puts a lot of emphasis on transparency, which is what happened, accountability, which is what happened, and accuracy, which is what’s happening,” said the mayor.

The mayor said people should trust the city’s results.

“This was an issue that was caught, an issue that was an issue that was addressed and an issue that we’ve taken seriously, we’ve worked to fix the issue and make sure that all the ballots were counted and counted correctly,” said Johnson.

At approximately 10 p.m., Gutierrez, flanked by election commissioners Haag, Patricia Ruiz-Cantu and Terrell Martin, formatted the specialized flash drives in anticipation of beginning an export process in the coming hours. To expedite the process, Republican poll worker David Bolter will serve along with Haag as an official Republican observer of the export. They will operate alongside a Democrat, Ruiz-Cantu and Martin, to watch the export process and maintain a chain of custody of the USB drives until they are in the county’s possession.

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