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In the early morning hours following Election Day 2020, Claire Woodall, Milwaukee’s chief elections officer, accidentally left behind a USB stick carrying vote totals at the city’s central absentee ballot counting facility. Election conspiracy theorists were quick to spot this mistake and accuse Woodall of rigging the election.

His claims were unfounded, but the error increased scrutiny on the city’s election staff and led to Woodall’s create a checklist Ensuring that employees in the centralized count do not miss any critical steps in the future.

This year, despite the checklist, election staff at Milwaukee’s central count made another procedural error, leaving the door open to conspiracy theorists once again.

Someone (city officials did not say who) overlooked the second step specified in the checklist and failed to lock and seal the hatch covers on the facility’s 13 tabulators before workers began preparing ballots. While counting continued for hours, the on-off buttons and USB ports of the machines were left exposed.

After election officials noticed this error, city officials Recount 31,000 absentee ballotsan election that led to delays in reporting results.

Results from this large, predominantly Democratic city came in at 4 a.m. Wednesday, just a few hours later than expected, but a time conspiracy theorists had alluded to. Suspicious time for changing vote totals. Their posts echoed claims from 2020, which used sensationalist language like “late-night ballot dumps” to describe the fact that in major cities it takes time — yes, sometimes late into the night — to collect, transmit, verify and accurately count absentee ballots.

In fact, the results in Milwaukee couldn’t come any sooner. Under state law, election officials cannot process hundreds of thousands of ballots until the morning of Election Day. This year, workers started work late due to delays in settling inbut we still expected it to be done around 2 or 3 in the morning. It later became clear that the decision to redo the count at noon would add more time to the process.

But these statements did little to curb the false conspiracy theories proliferating on the right, including the loss of U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde.

Election officials have known for years that the slightest mistakes, even perceived errors, can trigger false claims. In this case, failure to follow a critical security step occurred at the state’s most scrutinized election facility, despite new procedures aimed at reducing such errors.

Mert Bayar, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, said that for people with a conspiratorial mindset, such oversight cannot be explained away as just a mistake. Errors can give conspiracy theorists a sense of validation because they make “the conspiracy theory more realistic…more believable.”

For these people, election errors were perceived as “part of a conspiracy to steal the election,” he said.

Instead of thinking of the 2024 Milwaukee bug as a simple oversight, Bayar said conspiracy theorists might consider that “tabulator doors can’t be left open unless they’re trying something challenging, secretive.”

Genya Coulter, senior director of stakeholder relations at the Open Source Election Technology Institute, said Milwaukee can still fine-tune its processes and checklists.

“I don’t think anyone needs to be demonized,” he said, “but I do think there needs to be re-education. That would be helpful.”

Milwaukee bug initially sparked complaints but not suspicion

An election observer was the first to notice the open table doors and alert election officials. Around 2 p.m., Milwaukee’s current elections chief, Paulina Gutiérrez, moved from tabulator to tabulator, monitored by Democratic and Republican representatives, to lock all the doors. Two hours later, he called for all voting to be rerun via tabulators.

The tabulators were in full view of partisan observers and media, but behind a barrier that was accessible only to election officials and certain observers, such as representatives of both political parties who accompany election officials to some election processes. Gutiérrez said any tampering was clearly visible and there was no sign of it.

That’s why some Republicans in the centralized count have called for a recount of all votes and risked delays. U.S. Senator Ron Johnson, who went to the centralized count on Election Day to learn more about the error, said: I didn’t think it was a bad thingbut said the election operation there was “grossly incompetent”.

Coulter said the decision to restart the countdown was “the right call for transparency.”

Hovde, who lost the Senate race in the state carried by Donald Trump, used conspiratorial language when describing what happened.

“The results from election night were disappointing, especially considering that last-minute absentee ballots at 4 a.m. in Milwaukee reversed the outcome,” he said in his concession speech Monday. “There are a lot of troubling issues with these absentee ballots.”

In an earlier video, Hovde criticized Milwaukee’s election operation and spreading false claims about the share of votes his opponent, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, received from absentee ballots. This led to something The number of messages is increasing rapidly Baseless claim of election fraud in Wisconsin.

One Prominent conservative social media account questioned Whether leaving tabulator doors open constitutes a case of sabotage.

The Milwaukee Elections Commission said in a statement that it “unequivocally refutes Eric Hovde’s baseless claims about the integrity of our election process.”

Why were Milwaukee’s results late?

There is no evidence of fraud or abuse in Milwaukee or anywhere else in Wisconsin on Election Day. But several key factors combined to delay Milwaukee’s results until 4 a.m.

First, Milwaukee central counting workers began processing and tabulating ballots around 9 a.m., well after the 7 a.m. start time allowed under state law. The delay was a matter of organizing dozens of central counting workers and getting them to the correct station at the massive facility.

More notably, the tabulators were not shut down, leading to a recount of 31,000 ballots.

But both of these slowdowns might have been less consequential if Wisconsin election officials had been able to process absentee ballots on the Monday before Election Day, as some other states allow. Such a change would have allowed election officials to examine ballots and verify and check absentee voters but not count the votes. An effort to allow election officials to do so stalled in the state Senate this year.

Checklist change ‘can increase transparency’

Coulter, of the Open Source Election Technology Institute, said Milwaukee election officials may have avoided this situation entirely by changing centralized counting checklists and could avoid similar situations in the future.

Currently, the checklist states that tabulator doors must be locked and sealed at the beginning of Election Day. It is unclear why this step was skipped. Gutiérrez did not respond to questions seeking comment on who was responsible for the process or whether that person faced disciplinary action.

But Coulter said the step probably wouldn’t be overlooked if the checklist required the official responsible for locking tabulators to be accompanied by a representative from each major political party.

“This is a relatively painless change and I think it will increase transparency,” Coulter said.

“There needs to be an emphasis on having two people from different political views perform all tasks related to the painting,” he said.

Another preprocessing step on the checklist requires people working on tabulators to make sure the numbered seals affixed to tabulator doors are intact. It does not require checking whether tabulator doors are locked.

To prevent a repeat situation, Coulter said, “They should also check to make sure the power button door is locked properly and what to do if it isn’t.”

Coulter said election officials are aware of the scrutiny they face for errors and are sometimes more focused on avoiding mistakes than running election operations.

“It’s like a race car driver… If you focus on the wall, you’ll eventually hit that wall,” he said. “You have to train your mind to think about the curve and not the wall, but unfortunately it’s really hard for election officials to do that, especially in high-pressure areas.”

Alexander Schur is a Votebeat reporter based in Wisconsin. Contact at: [email protected].

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