Milwaukee election officials outline ballot-reporting mistake in letter to state

MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- Milwaukee's elections director sent state officials a letter Friday, Aug. 28 outlining the mistake that delayed the city's reporting of election results in August primary earlier this month.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission is set to discuss the mishap at its meeting Monday Aug. 31, and Milwaukee Election Commission (MEC) Director Paulina Gutierrez provided a response ahead of time.

There's no evidence the delay affected the results of the election, as David Crowley already led Francesca Hong before Milwaukee's more than 27,000 absentee ballots were registered with the county.

Still, the mistake raises questions about Milwaukee's election administration, given it was the third notable mishap in the last three years.

Citing conversations with state and city sources, CBS 58 reported earlier this week the agency's deputy director, Maricha Harris, was responsible for repeatedly exporting the wrong information onto a memory stick. 

Instead of downloading the election results from five of the city's nine tabulators, Harris exported audit logs from the vote counting machines.

Her mistake was visible to CBS 58 cameras on election night, as video from Milwaukee's central count showed the machine reading 'Export Audit Log' on the screen for more than 30 seconds. The process played out five different times, and neither Harris nor the rest of her download team ever noticed what was happening.

In an interview with CBS 58 on Wednesday, Gutierrez would not confirm whether Harris was in charge of the machines where the wrong info got exported. In her letter to the state, however, she admitted that was the case.

"MEC determined that the download team led by the Deputy Director mistakenly selected and downloaded the audit log rather than the election results file from the five of the nine tabulators," Gutierrez wrote. "Written procedures were available to the team at the time the downloads were performed."

Gutierrez said the agency will update materials to now include pictures of what the screen should look like. She said election officials will also install a "point-and-call verification process."

"Staff will verbally identify and confirm critical selections as they complete them, allowing other members of the bipartisan team to actively verify each step."