Milwaukee election officials are recounting roughly 30,000 absentee ballots after issues were discovered with tabulator seals.
City spokesman Jeff Flemming told reporters the redo will likely cause delays in reporting those results in the key swing state.
“It’s just out of an abundance of caution,” Flemming said. “We have no reason to believe that there was any compromise to any of the machines. But because they were not fully sealed, human error, and not fully sealed, we are going to zero them all out again, the 13 machines around, and then re-run the ballots that had already been processed.”
Election workers had begun tabulating the ballots Tuesday morning. Unlike some other states, Wisconsin law does not permit counting to begin before Election Day.
Flemming added that some steps, like opening the envelopes and sorting the ballots, won’t have to be redone.
“What has to be redone is just what’s happening against the wall at the machines,” Flemming told reporters. “It is gonna extend the time that we will get the totals here, we don’t know how much longer that will be. So it’s not insignificant.”
Wisconsin is one of several states expected to be a razor-tight contest between Vice President Harris and former President Trump, meaning that a delay in reporting the 30,000 votes could impact when media outlets are able to project a winner.
“This is an unacceptable example of incompetent election administration in a key swing state: voters deserve better and we are unambiguously calling on Milwaukee’s officials to do their jobs and count ballots quickly and effectively. Anything less undermines voter confidence,” Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley and Co-Chair Lara Trump said in a statement.
