'A new normal': Milwaukee election leaders outline response to April election ballot shortages

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- Milwaukee election officials want to take a new approach to spring elections after ballot shortages caused hours-long delays for some city voters earlier this month.

Paulina Gutierrez, director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, outlined what went wrong and how the city will respond during a meeting of board commissioners Monday evening. She proposed ordering ballots for each registered voter in future spring elections, which would more than double the number of ballots the city ordered for this year's spring contest.

Gutierrez told commissioners about half of Milwaukee's voting age population cast a ballot in the April 1 election, which was headlined by a state Supreme Court race that decided control of the court. Gutierrez said the city had ordered enough ballots to cover 45% turnout, anticipating the city would break its previous spring election turnout record of 40% in 2023, when Janet Protasiewicz' win gave liberals control of the state Supreme Court for the first time in more than a decade.

Guitierrez said the city initially ordered ballots in early January. By early March, the city placed a second order, anticipating greater-than-expected turnout as billionaire Elon Musk poured $20 million into the race supporting conservative Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel. Progressive candidate Susan Crawford won handily, getting 55% of the vote in a landslide by Wisconsin standards.

In mid-March, the city ordered even more ballot paper in the event it would need to print more ballots. Gutierrez told commissioners the city was printing more ballots on Election Day, but couriers couldn't get them to polling sites quick enough to avoid shortages. 

As a result, a total of 69 polling sites experienced ballot issues while nine sites ran completely out of ballots. The worst shortages forced some voters to wait for hours before being able to cast a ballot. That led to tense moments at some polling places.

"We also heard reports from [chief polling place inspectors] who expressed they had concerns about their own safety as they tried to manage crowds of rightfully frustrated voters," deputy elections director Maricha Harris said.

Polling places on the city's northwest side were affected the most by ballot shortages. Gutierrez said the distances from City Hall and the election operations center in the Bay View neighborhood made it harder to get ballots to those polling places in a timely manner.

While Gutierrez said the commission would work to make its ballot delivery operation more efficient, she said the most surefire way to avoid future shortages was to start ordering enough ballots to cover each registered voter.

"Moving forward with spring elections, one ballot per registered voter," Gutierrez said after the meeting, "100% turnout is what we're planning for."

Gutierrez told reporters she did not know how much the city spent on ballots for this month's election, and she did not have an estimate for how much it'd cost to order ballots for every voter in future spring elections.

"I don't have that number right now," she said. "But at this point, it's a worthy investment."

Gutierrez and Harris said in a presentation the city needs to start anticipating spring election turnout that resembles November general elections, at least when there's a state Supreme Court race. Supreme Court contests will be on the ballot in each spring through 2030, although liberals will have control of the court until at least 2028. 

"Our historical data no longer serves us. We're at a new age and a new normal," she said. "And so, we're moving forward with one ballot per voter."

Defending central count

Gutierrez maintained Milwaukee is best served by having a single location where it counts absentee ballots, known as a central count site.

State Rep. Dave Maxey (R-New Berlin) told CBS 58 last week he opposed the state's biggest city using central count to process its absentee ballots. Forty-one other municipalities use the central count system, including four of the state's five most populous cities.

The only exception is Madison, which is dealing with its own election-related fallout after clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl resigned Monday amid an internal investigation into how the city failed to count nearly 200 ballots in last November's presidential election.

"I would like to get rid of central count in Milwaukee," Maxey told CBS 58. "I don't know that we need a central count. When I went to different polling locations -- I was at seven or eight that day -- I saw people standing, waiting for something to do, where they could've been processing absentee ballots."

Maxey chairs the Assembly's elections committee. His office has said Maxey is not working on any legislation that would prohibit Milwaukee from using central count.

Gutierrez said it'd be much more expensive for Milwaukee to have staff processing absentee ballots at each of the city's 180 polling places. She added the process would be inefficient, too, since ballots would be coming in from all over the city through election days instead of having a single site.

"In the 2024 general election, we counted over 108,000 ballots," she said. "That means we would have to process 108,000 ballots and get them out to our 180 polling locations, and the city of Milwaukee is 96 square miles."

"I know we didn't get much time to talk when [Maxey] was at central count this last election, and it was a really stressful period because we were dealing with the ballot crisis," Gutierrez added. "But I would be happy to chat with him afterward and talk about how important central count is to the city of Milwaukee."