Election 'human error' delays key primary results in latest voting mishap to hit blue states

Milwaukee's election results from Tuesday's primary were delayed because of a "human error" when five of nine USB flash drives did not download election results, prompting critics to call it a showing of "complete incompetence." The error effectively stalled the results of the closely watched Democratic gubernatorial primary between Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley and Francesca Hong.

The delay came amid heightened scrutiny of election administration in Democratic-led jurisdictions, where recent ballot and reporting errors have drawn criticism and, in some cases, investigations from Republican lawmakers.

"We’re all human, and humans can make errors," Paulina Gutiérrez, executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, said during a midnight news conference.

The error delayed the county's election results by an hour as Gutiérrez and Milwaukee Election Commission staffers returned to Central Count with a police escort to retrieve the remaining voting data.

HASAN PIKER WARNS ‘THE KNIVES WILL BE OUT’ AFTER SOCIALIST FRANCESCA HONG FALLS IN WISCONSIN UPSET "So, basically what we need to do is go back to the operations center, and we're going to download out five of those machines (and) the results and make sure that's not the audit log," Gutiérrez said during the news conference.

"So, have the reports printed from the first download.

We're going to reprint and start the process so that we can compare those results." The Milwaukee Election Commission said in a news release that the audit log, which documents activity on the tabulator, was downloaded rather than the election results.

"The issue delayed the reporting of Milwaukee's results, but it did not affect the results," the press release stated.

"The election results remained intact and unchanged on the tabulators.

No ballots were lost or changed, or needed to be recounted or retabulated." Gutiérrez said there were no issues with the voting machines themselves but confirmed to a reporter that a wrong button was pushed when downloading the data.

In an interview with Votebeat , Gutiérrez said the time it took to download results from the tabulators varied.

She said that while the standard time frame was 10 minutes, some tabulators completed the downloads in three minutes.

MARYLAND BALLOT BLUNDER SPARKS HOUSE GOP PROBE AHEAD OF PRIMARY "The fact that this happened five times seems more like a training issue," former Milwaukee Election Commissioner Claire Woodall told Votebeat.

"Was this person trained on how to export results? Are they familiar with the machines and how you export results?" The error meant that 15,000 votes had yet to be counted at that point.