About 30K Milwaukee absentee ballots need to be retabulated

MILWAUKEE, Wis. (WBAY) - About 30,000 absentee ballots need to be retabulated at the city of Milwaukee’s central count at the Baird Center, according to a report from WISN.

City officials said the doors for 13 tabulator machines were not closed properly.

“We are going to zero them all out again, 13 machines around, and then rerun the ballots that had already been processed,” said Jeff Fleming of the Milwaukee mayor’s office. It is going to extend the time that we will get the totals. We don’t know how much longer."

City officials said they began counting ballots at the Baird Center just before 9 a.m.

Flemming said it was a human error.

“We don’t want any questions about the accuracy about the results,” said Flemming. “We’re going to make sure that they are run correctly.”

Ann Jacobs, Chair of the WEC, posted the following statement online:

Important update on Wisconsin: Milwaukee Central Count hit a snafu today. The tabulator machines have doors that are supposed to be locked and sealed before tabulation. Sadly, that did not occur this morning.

Both political parties agree that nothing was wrong with the 1Tabulation so far. However, in the interest of transparency and so that people can have confidence in the tabulation, the decision was made to re-tabulate the ballots run through so far. That’s about 34,000 ballots give or take.

So the machines are being zeroed out, and the ballots will be re-run. This will delay Milwaukee’s reporting. However, this was absolutely the right decision for them to make. And it was important to make this decision *before* the results were known.

This is the right thing to do. When mistakes are made, acknowledge them, fix them, explain them.

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