Human Error Delays Milwaukee Primary Election Results

A human error involving mislabeled data files delayed the final results of Milwaukee's primary elections on Tuesday night, forcing election workers to reprocess approximately 30,000 absentee ballots and pushing the announcement of the county's results until after 1 a.m. Wednesday. The incident, which officials attributed to a worker selecting the wrong download option, has renewed scrutiny of the city's election administration procedures.

The problem began when five of nine USB flash drives delivered from Milwaukee's central count facility to the Milwaukee County Courthouse were found to contain system audit logs instead of the actual vote totals. Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Paulina Gutierrez confirmed the mistake was due to human error. "We had a human error," Gutierrez said Tuesday night. "The wrong button was pressed." She emphasized that the voting machines themselves were not at fault and that the paper ballots and poll books remained secure.

To correct the error, election workers had to return to the central count location, pull the correct results from the five machines, and transport the data back to the courthouse. This process delayed the final...