Milwaukee’s Latest Election Mess A Little Bit Of History Repeating

Those of a certain age (old like me) will remember Dana Carvey’s recurring character, the sanctimonious Church Lady, on Saturday Night Live in the 1980s — when SNL was funny. After a celebrity guest would finish up some story of moral depravity, the Church Lady would raise her left brow and patronizingly declare, “Well, isn’t that special?”

We need an election integrity Church Lady in the office of the Milwaukee Election Commission.

Although, there was nothing particularly special about Tuesday’s late-night absentee ballot debacle in a blue city that has routinely been the center of state — and national — election scandal for years.

‘The Moment Milwaukee Elections Staff Screwed Up’

Like a fox investigating a henhouse homicide, the Milwaukee Election Commission has launched a review into the “human error” that led to a long delay in counting some 28,000 absentee ballots cast in last week’s Democratic Party gubernatorial primary.

“Since 2024, we’ve conducted after-action reviews every election, and our review for this partisan primary is underway. It’s an entire department-wide effort,” said Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Paulina Gutierrez during a special meeting Friday evening, according to TMJ4.

Milwaukee’s top election official claims memory sticks that contained audit logs on five of the nine data storage devices — not election results — were delivered to the Milwaukee County Clerk’s Office on primary election night. Oops.

The reported glitch delayed Milwaukee’s results into the wee hours of Wednesday morning, which delayed the call of the primary contest winner until the wee hours of Wednesday morning. While Milwaukee and state election regulators once again insist there’s nothing to see here, their swift assurances do little to convince skeptics who have seen this movie before. Again and Again.

And a doth-protest-too-much Democratic Party, known for rigging its primaries, isn’t going to do much to quell suspicions that “establishment” Democrats went all-in again on making sure that their preferred candidate — the one who didn’t say Thanksgiving should be cancelled — comes out on top.

Ultimately,  Madison socialist Francesca Hong lost by less than 4,000 votes to slightly less far-left Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, whose political goose seemed cooked just a few weeks before the primary election.

That’s right. The winner by a nose was the government leader of Milwaukee County.

We know some things.

Milwaukee CBS58 caught on camera “the moment Milwaukee elections staff screwed up,” reporter AJ Bayatpour wrote on X last week.

“For comparison, here’s what the screens looked like when someone hit ‘export files’ instead of ‘export audit log,’” he noted. “Still waiting for a response from the city election commission, but we asked @WI_Elections tech staff, and they confirm that appears to be the moment of the mistake.”

As the news outlet reported:

A CBS 58 crew was at Milwaukee’s central count location in Bay View Tuesday night. Recorded images show a screen within the elections page on vote-counting machines gave multiple options, including ‘export files’ and ‘export audit log.’

When Gutierrez pressed ‘export files’ on one of the screens, a loading screen read ‘collecting and exporting batch data.’ When another worker hit ‘export audit log,’ the loading screen read ‘exporting audit log.’

Apparently, nobody caught the mistake as the wrong info was exporting on any of the five occasions it happened.

We know this wasn’t Democrat-controlled Milwaukee’s first rodeo with election integrity troubles. The long wait for election results has become standard operating procedure for Wisconsin elections, mucked up by the latest round of irregularities from Milwaukee election officials.

Milwaukee has a way of coming up with just enough votes the Democrat machine needs to win swing state Wisconsin. Let’s just call it a “flair for drama.”

‘Keep the World Waiting’

In the 2024 general election, Milwaukee’s vote count was mired in tabulation machine security breaches and other election integrity issues, as The Federalist investigated. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., concluded that Milwaukee election administration was as “grossly incompetent” as he’s ever seen.

Said incompetence — “human error” — put the counting of some 108,000 absentee ballots well behind schedule on Election Day following the discovery that 13 ballot tabulators were not secured, apparently necessitating the recount of more than 30,000 absentee ballots.

When the smoke cleared, Milwaukee delivered the votes incumbent Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a far-left Democrat from Madison, needed to win a narrow statewide election.

It was strangely reminiscent of the rigged 2020 presidential election, when Milwaukee came through late with enough votes for Joe Biden to claim victory over President Donald Trump in battleground Wisconsin.

As The Federalist has extensively reported, a liberal activist tied to the infamous Zuckbucks grants of 2020 congratulated Milwaukee’s election administrator for “delivering just the margin needed at 3:00 a.m.” for Democrat Biden.

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

Woodall LOL’d about 10 minutes later in an email response to Chew.

“I just wanted to say I had been awake for a full 24 hours!” the Milwaukee elections chief wrote.

Woodall told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that she “read Chew’s email at the time as a joking way to note the state’s results couldn’t be called until Milwaukee’s total came in.” She claimed she was “kind of uncomfortable” with Chew’s choice of words and shouldn’t have responded.

Dean Knudson, former member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, wasn’t comfortable with Woodall’s “joking” in an election in which Biden would claim victory by about 20,000 votes.

“I do believe she was joking, but to joke about this displays an extraordinary level of insensitivity and callous disregard for the damage caused by actions in Milwaukee that night,” Knudson told the Journal Sentinel at the time.

Woodall didn’t help her case when she “briefly misplaced a flash drive containing vote counts on Election Night.” A police officer later had to deliver the data collection device.

Sound familiar? It should.

‘Lack of Confidence’

Milwaukee was the scene of another election night debacle in 2018 when “reconstructed ballots” drove Democrat Tony Evers to a slim win over two-term Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

“In each election, there are absentee ballots that have to be reconstructed due to voter error or damage to the ballot,” the clown show Milwaukee Election Commission said in response to allegations of foul play. “Damage to the ballots can occur during the mail processing of the ballot. With this election, ballots were also damaged during the sealing of the envelope at in-person absentee voting.”

In just about every election in this century it seems Milwaukee election administration is marred by incompetence and scandal.

In 2004, law enforcement officials investigated the presidential election and found “multiple problems with both registrations and voting,” former Federal Election Commission member Hans von Spakovsky reported in 2006.

“For example, 5,217 ‘students’ were registered who listed their residence as a college dormitory that only houses 2,600 students; at least 220 ineligible felons voted; 370 registered addresses weren’t legal residences in the city; some homeless individuals were registered in multiple locations; and residents of other states (including staffers for one of the major political parties) registered and voted in the election,” von Spakovsky, who previously served as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, wrote.

The Wall Street Journal reported on how Democrat city officials shut down the Milwaukee Police Department’s special investigative unit into the fraud-filled 2004 election, and local prosecutors declined to pursue charges because they had a “lack of confidence” in the sloppy record-keeping of the Milwaukee Election Commission.

Kerry won by just four-tenths of a percentage point, 11,384 votes.

‘Too Many Problems’

Wisconsin’s election regulator’s official position is the go-to defense, assurances that “Wisconsin elections are safe, secure, and accurate due to multiple checks and balances.” That’s what  Wisconsin Elections Commission spokeswoman Emilee Miklas said in a statement to Fox News Digital.

Bob Spindell, vice chairman of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, has called for the agency to open up an investigation into Milwaukee latest election administration scandal.

“Too many problems again with Milwaukee Central Count 2020, 2024 and now 2026,” Spindell told The Federalist in a text message. “I call on the Wisconsin Elections Commission Chair to place Milwaukee Central Count on the next Wisconsin Election Commission agenda for possible investigation.”

But all is well, according to the state elections regulator’s communications director.

“While human mistakes can happen — Wisconsin’s election system, which includes layers of oversight at the local and state level, ensures things are caught and corrected,”  Miklas said.

Well, isn’t that special.

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.