Milwaukee election officials are facing fresh scrutiny after a bizarre counting mistake delayed results until after 1 a.m. and forced workers to reprocess roughly 30,000 ballots.
Officials blamed the mess on “human error” after discovering that five of nine memory sticks delivered from Milwaukee’s central count location to the county courthouse did not contain election results.
Instead, the devices contained audit logs.
Milwaukee Election Commission Director Paulina Gutierrez said the machines themselves were not responsible for the problem. According to officials, someone simply selected the wrong option while downloading information onto the memory sticks.
The mistake sent election workers back to Milwaukee’s central count facility, where they had to download the results again from five machines before returning to the courthouse to finish tallying the vote.
The unusual late-night scramble quickly fueled accusations and suspicion online, particularly among voters already skeptical of Milwaukee’s history of drawn-out election-night counting.
Officials ultimately had to recount approximately 30,000 ballots because of the error.
Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson announced the final Milwaukee totals shortly after 1 a.m.
Crowley finished with 65,131 votes, or 43.04%, while Francesca Hong received 62,739 votes, or 41.46%, according to the results announced by county officials.
Christenson defended the process and insisted additional reviews would catch any problems.
🚨 WOW. Socialists are furious after “human error” in Milwaukee WI after midnight caused 5 USB STICKS to NOT have the election results on them 🤯
So officials went back, “fixed” the data, uploaded it, and socialist Francesca Hong NARROWLY LOST by a few thousand votes to David… pic.twitter.com/u4JY00kwxe
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) August 12, 2026
“At the end of the day, we will start the canvass tomorrow or the next day, which essentially is an audit. And we also do two extra voluntary audits. So there are plenty of checks and balances in the system to alleviate any of those concerns,” Christenson said.
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But the explanation did little to stop questions from spreading after another high-profile Milwaukee vote count stretched deep into the night because of an avoidable mistake.
Election officials said the issue was caused by the memory sticks used to transfer results rather than the voting machines themselves.
Five devices had the wrong files downloaded onto them, requiring officials to retrieve the correct results before the county could complete its count.
Milwaukee has repeatedly dealt with delayed election results because Wisconsin law prevents officials from processing absentee ballots before polls open on Election Day.
That leaves workers facing a large volume of absentee votes on election night, including ballots that can continue arriving until polls close.
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But Tuesday night’s delay was not simply the result of Wisconsin election law or a large absentee turnout.
This time, officials acknowledged that somebody pushed the wrong button.
The admission immediately became political ammunition online, where critics questioned how tens of thousands of ballots could suddenly require another round of processing because election workers downloaded the wrong data.
There has been no official finding that the mistake changed the outcome or that ballots were intentionally manipulated.
Still, with Democrats already battling widespread distrust over election administration, having officials announce a “human error,” send workers back for replacement vote data and recount roughly 30,000 ballots after midnight is hardly the kind of scene likely to reassure skeptical voters.
County officials say the upcoming canvass and additional voluntary audits will provide further checks on the final totals.
For Milwaukee election officials, however, the bigger political problem may be explaining why another Election Day ended with voters staring at the clock and wondering what exactly was happening behind the scenes.
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