‘A Real Mess’: Milwaukee Again Delivers An Election Night Debacle

Having lived through the shenanigans of the 2020 election, Brian Schimming and Ron Johnson, Wisconsin’s senior senator, weren’t about to take any chances in Milwaukee. 

Schimming, chairman of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, got word that there was a problem with tabulators at Milwaukee’s Central Count on Election Day. It was a big problem. 

As The Federalist reported, the seals on 13 vote tabulation machines appeared to have been tampered with. The doors on the tabulators were not secured. Thankfully, Republican observers noticed the problem and called GOP officials. 

‘Human Error’

Schimming and Johnson arrived at Milwaukee’s Baird Center (a downtown convention hall and site of Central Count operations) at around 7 p.m. on Tuesday and were confronted by a mob of reporters and cameras, Schimming told me in an interview. The top Republicans took a tour of the massive, multi-gymnasium-style floor. They were joined by the party’s election integrity team. Milwaukee Election administrator Paula Gutiérrez guided them to the tabulators. 

“Ron had some pointed questions for her. He said, ‘Oh, by the way, is the video available?’” Schimming said. Video surveillance of the machines and the Central Count operations is required, and, yes, the video must be made available for public inspection. “It got a little chippy. [Gutiérrez] did not appear to be happy there. I wasn’t going to lose any sleep over that.”

Gutiérrez, who replaced controversial Milwaukee elections chief Claire Woodall-Vogg after she was fired in May, told the press that it was all a matter of “human error.” 

“There were seals on the door, but because the door was not properly closed, some of the seals got loose,” she said in a press conference.

“It appears some doors were not fully secured by senior election officials,” the Milwaukee Election Commission later claimed in a statement. 

Said “human error” forced election officials to have to rerun more than 30,000 absentee ballots through the machines, further delaying a counting operation notorious for prolonged vote counts. 

After the personal inspection, Schimming told Fox News reporter Mike Tobin, “This goes down under the rule, you had one job.” And Milwaukee, once again, did that job miserably. 

“This seems like a real mess,” Johnson told reporters. 

Gutiérrez insisted that the ballots were never in a “position to be touched or tampered with,” according to Wisconsin Public Radio. 

“I know for a fact that these machines are highly secure, there was no tampering, we were able to confirm that,” Gutiérrez said. “But (in an) over abundance of caution, we are reprocessing.”

‘Grossly Incompetent’

Gutiérrez did not return a call from The Federalist seeking comment.

It was not a good look for a Democrat-led city that was again forced to count deep into the night — as it had done in the rigged 2020 election —  before it was clear Milwaukee couldn’t find enough votes this time for Vice President Kamala Harris. Early Wednesday morning, former President Donald Trump was declared the winner of swing state Wisconsin by some 29,000 votes, a state he reportedly lost by less than 21,000 votes four years before. In fact, it was beautiful, purple Wisconsin that got Trump to the constitutionally required 270 electoral vote count to secure the election victory and make the Republican only the second president in U.S. history to win two nonconsecutive terms. 

But the questions remain, and GOP officials still are looking for answers. 

Milwaukee Central Count delayed opening for at least an hour on Election Day because only 60 percent of poll workers showed up, according to Republican Party officials. City officials reportedly had to bring in as many as 40 firefighters, health workers, and IT employees to assist in the ballot recount. 

Johnson walked away from Central Count amazed. He said he doesn’t believe anything nefarious went down, but what he witnessed was “grossly incompetent” election administration. 

“I’ve never seen anything so disorganized,” the senator told me in an interview on Friday. “They didn’t have a checklist in place to check out these machines to make sure the doors were locked and secured. They started late and they were just completely disorganized.” 

‘A Flair for Drama’

Republican observers told The Federalist that they felt like Milwaukee was slow-walking the process. Milwaukee elections officials also attempted to bring in additional ballots after the polls closed, but Trump campaign and GOP attorneys were all over that, working to block the suspect ballot drop, officials said. Curiously, Wisconsin Democrat Party Chairman Ben Wikler predicted a Trump lead early in the Badger State would be a “red mirage.”  

“So, in Milwaukee, you’ll see 100 percent of precincts reporting before you see the numbers that come out of those early votes in person and those absentee ballots, which, my guess is, are heavily weighted toward Harris supporters,” Wikler told MSNBC the day before the election. “So, that means that you’re gonna see a red mirage, where it seems like Trump is doing better than he actually is because they haven’t counted and reported those absentee ballots yet, and then the blue shift when those … ballots are introduced to add to the totals. That could be in the middle of the night. It certainly was in 2020.”

That’s exactly how it went down in 2020, when all kinds of strange things were going down at Milwaukee Central Count. In the early morning hours the day after the election, Wisconsin’s most populous city delivered enough Dem votes for a Joe Biden victory over Trump. 

Woodall-Vogg, executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission at the time, worked closely with leftist organizations through a controversial “Zuckbucks” agreement. 

“Damn, Claire, you have a flair for drama, delivering just the margin needed at 3:00 a.m.,” Ryan Chew of the Elections Group, wrote in a congratulatory email to Vogg. “I bet you had those votes counted at midnight, and just wanted to keep the world waiting!”

“That’s been the general trend. We build a big lead and we have to withstand votes coming in from Milwaukee,” Johnson said. “Why was Wikler talking about the wee hours of the morning for those votes to come in?”

The senator said it will be up to the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee whether they want to pursue an investigation. He suspects they won’t at this point. 

“I think the level of incompetence would lead you to believe some of this is nefarious,” he said. “But the best way I can describe it is grossly incompetent.” 

What Milwaukee’s mess does once again is erode confidence in elections, elections the left and their corporate media pals keep insisting are the most secure in the world.

“They are reducing confidence in results,” the senator said. “We want to restore confidence so no matter who wins we all believe in the results. Democrats don’t. That’s why they’re opposed to every confidence-building proposal.”

For more election news and updates, visit electionbriefing.com.

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.