Milwaukee's top election official has 30 days to give state lawmakers a timestamped accounting of how five of nine ballot tabulators failed to export vote totals on primary night, forcing workers back to the Central Count facility under police escort to retrieve tens of thousands of uncounted absentee ballots. The demand comes from state Rep. Dave Maxey, who chairs the Wisconsin Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections, and it puts fresh pressure on an office that has now stumbled three times in recent election cycles.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Maxey sent an August 21 letter to Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Paulina Gutiérrez seeking details about the August 11 primary-election download error, warning that a fourth mistake would not be treated as an accident. Maxey has called for Gutiérrez to resign if the commission cannot correct its mistakes and provide a dependable election operation, and he described the pattern as one of mismanagement. Gutiérrez told the paper the wrong button was pressed during the downloading process at the Central Count center, and she said she will prepare a formal response to Maxey's letter.
The error happened on August 11, when election staff left the facility without exporting results from five of the nine tabulators, downloading audit logs instead of vote tallies, according to MacIver Institute. Human error caused those five flash drives to contain audit logs rather than tabulated vote totals, and workers had to return under police escort to retrieve roughly 15,000 to 28,000 uncounted absentee votes. The mix-up delayed announcement of final results until the early morning hours of August 12.
A Governor's Race Hung In The Balance
The delay stalled results in Wisconsin's closely watched Democratic gubernatorial primary, where Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley ultimately defeated Representative Francesca Hong by about 3,800 votes statewide after a late absentee vote surge, per Marquette University Law School. Absentee ballots made up nearly 26% of all votes cast in the primary, the same analysis notes, underscoring how much weight rode on Milwaukee's Central Count operation finishing its tally cleanly. Milwaukee election votes were ultimately reported accurately, and the city is not seeking disciplinary action against Nick DeSiato, chief of staff for Mayor Cavalier Johnson, according to the Journal Sentinel.
Milwaukee election officials transported the absentee ballots on flash drives from the Central Count location to the Milwaukee County Election Commission, the paper reports. Following election night errors, municipal vote totals in Wisconsin undergo a multi-day official canvass audited by county election officials before certification, and Milwaukee County Elections Director Michelle Hawley led that canvass beginning August 13, according to CBS 58.
The Third Stumble In Six Years
Maxey said trust in elections requires competence, consistency, and transparency rather than only an absence of fraud, and he argued Milwaukee's Central Count operation has failed that test three times. He called the episode a travesty, plain and simple, and said voters deserve to know exactly why. Cavalier Johnson appointed Gutiérrez to the executive director post in 2024, and the commission has taken responsibility for what happened while working on changes meant to strengthen the process before November, the Journal Sentinel reports.
The pattern stretches back to 2020, when former director Claire Woodall established a 26-step central count checklist after a flash drive was briefly left behind during that year's presidential election, a protocol built with Republican input to secure the chain of custody for thumb drives, according to Votebeat. Johnson replaced Woodall with Gutiérrez in May 2024 amid internal management issues, even as senior election staff had warned in writing that she lacked general election administration experience, Votebeat reported at the time. Gutiérrez had served as deputy director since 2023 but had not previously led a major general election.
Then in November 2024, Milwaukee officials had to re-tabulate about 31,000 absentee ballots after discovering tabulator access doors had not been properly closed and sealed, a scramble that pushed final results to around 4:30 a.m. Nine Milwaukee polling sites also temporarily ran out of ballots on election day in 2025, adding to the list of stumbles Maxey has cited as evidence of a broader management problem.
A Statutory Bottleneck Behind The Chaos
Much of the pressure on Central Count traces back to state law itself. Wisconsin prohibits municipal election workers from opening or processing absentee ballots before 7 a.m. on Election Day, a restriction that forces high-volume operations like Milwaukee's to process tens of thousands of mail-in votes within a single 24-hour window, the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service reported. Legislative proposals to allow earlier processing have repeatedly stalled in the state legislature, leaving Central Count staff racing the clock every cycle.
Milwaukee is something of an outlier in how it handles the workload. Only 43 of Wisconsin's roughly 1,850 municipalities use central count processing for absentee ballots, while the vast majority tally mail-in votes directly at individual precinct polling locations, according to MacIver Institute. State lawmakers authorized central count facilities back in 2005 specifically to ease congestion at polling places in larger cities, but critics now point to Milwaukee's repeated errors as reason to reconsider that model altogether.
The August 11 stumble also arrived amid a rockier statewide primary season. Green Bay issued duplicate ballots to 152 voters, and postal processing errors caused an inter-city ballot mix-up across Pleasant Prairie, New Berlin, and Muskego, as Hoodline previously reported. State election officials and the U.S. Postal Service launched investigations into those mailing errors, adding to the scrutiny facing election administrators statewide heading into the fall.
The Wisconsin Assembly Committee on Campaigns and Elections has requested that the Milwaukee Election Commission make itself available for a committee briefing, on top of the 30-day written response Maxey demanded. With the November general election approaching, the outcome of that exchange could determine whether lawmakers push to reform ballot-processing timelines, move to eliminate central count facilities, or simply keep watching Milwaukee's Central Count operation for a fourth misstep.
