Milwaukee has to recount around 31,000 absentee ballots after a “sealing error” may have led to an insecure counting process, city spokesman Jeff Fleming told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Tuesday night.
The doors on the city’s voting tabulation machines were not properly shut, Caroline Reinwald, a Milwaukee Election Commission spokeswoman, told the Sentinel.
The recount could extend the final count by one to three hours, Fleming said.
“We have no reason to believe that there was any compromise to any of the machines,” Fleming told the outlet, noting the recount was due to “an abundance of caution.”
“But because they were not fully sealed — human error — and not fully sealed, we are going to zero them all out again … and then rerun the balance that had already been processed,” Fleming concluded.
While Milwaukee GOP chair Hilario DeLeon said he doesn’t think anything “nefarious” led to the error, two Republican National Committee officials called it “unacceptable.”
BREAKING: The city of Milwaukee is going to recount about 30,000 absentee ballots that had already been counted.
There was an issue with one tabulator not being sealed. Out of precaution, the city will recount each ballot. A long night just got longer
— A.J. Bayatpour (@AJBayatpour) November 5, 2024
“Throughout the day we have been monitoring slow ballot counting in Milwaukee. Now, our legal team has learned that the counting took place in insecure conditions and the city now has to start over, wildly extending the counting timeline,” RNC chairman Michael Whatley and co-chair Lara Trump said in a statement posted on X.
“This is an unacceptable example of incompetent election administration in a key swing state: voters deserve better and we are unambiguously calling on Milwaukee’s officials to do their jobs and count ballots quickly and effectively. Anything less undermines voter confidence,” the statement concluded.
🚨🚨🚨 Throughout the day we have been monitoring slow ballot counting in Milwaukee.
Now, our legal team has learned that the counting took place in unsecured conditions and the city now has to start over, wildly extending the counting timeline.
This is an unacceptable…
— Lara Trump (@LaraLeaTrump) November 5, 2024
Milwaukee is the largest city in Wisconsin, one of the seven key swing states widely seen as battlegrounds for the presidential election.
