Paulina Gutierrez leads Milwaukee's high-stakes ballot count

Election officials in Milwaukee are set to begin counting over 58,000 absentee ballots on Tuesday. The operation is taking place at the Italian Community Center, where the process is expected to last several hours. Officials aim to finish by 1 a.m.

This count follows a troubled August session where delays and errors disrupted the workflow. Paulina Gutierrez, the executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, stated that the goal is to avoid repeating those mistakes. She attributed the previous problems to human error rather than a flaw in the system.

Approximately 130 volunteers will begin work at 7 a.m. They will open and verify each ballot before running them through high-speed tabulation machines. In August, a wrong button press on the tabulators caused delays because data had to be redownloaded on multiple machines.

Gutierrez explained that every machine action is linked to a physical paper trail. She noted that humans can make mistakes, which is why the system uses multiple layers and paper trails to protect accuracy and security. "Everything has a paper trail, everything that happens in a machine is connected right to a ballot," she said.

After the machines finish processing, the results will be downloaded onto a secure data stick. Police will then escort that stick to the Milwaukee County Courthouse. This final step ensures the data is moved to a secure location once the count is complete.