Election Commission - Regular Meeting

All right. Let's call the meeting order at 9.34. George, can you call the roll?

Commissioner is Dawn Clark, right? Correct. She's excused. Commissioner Fritz. Chairman Poznanski. And then we'll have for the cameras, we'll have Michelle do the signing. And then I'll turn it over to Michelle. All right.

First of all, the report of the county's volunteer independent post-election audits. So we audited all five of these words listed and found no variance or difference from what the tape said. So the physical ballots matched what was REPORTED. I'M GOING TO GO ON TO D RIGHT AWAY, THE ELECTION CAMPUS REPORT FROM THE 2026 PARTISAN PRIMARY. SO YOU'LL HAVE WITH YOU THE RESULTS FROM ELECTION NIGHT. SO THIS IS PRIOR TO THE CHANGE. WE HAVE 499,705 REGISTERED VOTERS IN MILWAUKEE COUNTY WITH 927 as the total ballots cast. So that was about 36% turnout, which is pretty on par with our August partisan primary election. As a result of our canvas, we did make some additional, we made some changes. Overall, we had some 15 provisional ballots issued on Election Day with only one actually being cured, and that was in the City of Milwaukee Ward 223. IN MILWAUKEE, THEY ALSO HAD TWO CHALLENGES DURING THEIR MUNICIPAL BOARD OF CANVAS. ESSENTIALLY, THEY DISCOVERED THAT SOMEBODY CAME TO THE POLLS, AND THEN THEY ALSO HAD ALREADY RETURNED THEIR ABSENTEE BALLOT, WHICH SOMETIMES HAPPENS IN THE FALL ELECTION CYCLE WHEN THE BALLOTS GO OUT ABOUT 45 DAYS IN ADVANCE. SO THEY WERE ABLE TO IDENTIFY THAT AND THEN PULL THE ABSENTEE BALLOTS, AND WE WILL MOVE THOSE FROM THE POLL. And then Ward 316 out of the City of Milwaukee, it's actually not a ward in the City of Milwaukee, but unfortunately the way that we program, someone must have, there's no ballots physically for it. But the express vote still can generate a ballot. And so unfortunately at that polling place, somebody selected 316. So we did remove those from the tally as well because they actually are not our ballots who count. So I'll take a look at programming and see if we can remove that from the option or what we can do to remedy that. We've never had that happen in the past. So it's kind of a bleep. And then we had several registered write-ins and a lot of unregistered. So we're not required, the municipalities are required to tally those unregistered ones. We really only have to track for purposes, our purposes of certification, those that were actual registered write-ins. And then you'll see Danita Ball for that one board in Milwaukee. Sometimes people don't mark the bubble and they just write it in. So it's really, you have to analyze all of those ballots to make sure that there's no changes that we have to account for. So overall, you'll see on the summary page that those are the changes that we made throughout, and those are our final results for the county.

I think in advance of November, we want to make sure that the Ward 316 issue is repeated. I can imagine with the scrutiny that people voting in a non-existent ward.

Well, it exists, it's just in another county. And so it's always been on our books in that it's a zero population ward. Because they have 356 wards, taking two wards out in the middle is kind of, you know, they used to be the last ones, and now they're not the last ones anymore.

Got it.

So I certainly can program that machine, actually, to be only able to provide a Ward 1 ballot. So, like I said, we don't ever print any physical ballots. It's 316 and 317 that are both in our northern and western counties.

Yeah, I'm not worried about the substance of the issue, but the optics.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

And again, specifically, it's a slow morning for me, so what made those other votes show up in that 316?

Because they have an express vote at that location, so there's no physical ballots, but they allow somebody to be able to, on the express vote, you can pick all of the wards in Milwaukee County. And so what will end up happening is they selected Ward 316 because it is available in the pick list. So these people, they didn't have any options to vote in any specific, they just had the statewide ones. They didn't have any local congressional because they wouldn't have been in our district, so they couldn't have voted in those anyway. But we did remove them from our galleys, and I'll work with the city to remedy that.

And your plan is basically that that express boat machine can't make it?

Yeah, I can burn the media for that particular location. The way that we burn all of the media for their express boats, because we probably burn 300 pieces of media for all of their machines, we do an all-ward stick. It's just easier and more efficient. It would be really tough to do, okay, they have 345 active wards. And so to delineate or make them each individual would take forever. So we usually do them as all ward sticks. And then it is the hope that they have somebody at the polling place, like a poll worker, helping to support them. TO MAKE SURE THAT PEOPLE ARE PICKING THE RIGHT WARD. SO I'M NOT EXACTLY SURE WHAT HAPPENED OVER THERE, BUT WE KNEW IT ON ELECTION NIGHT RIGHT AWAY BECAUSE, YOU KNOW, WE KNOW WHICH WARD SHOULD HAVE ZERO. SO WE DID IDENTIFY IT RIGHT AWAY AND THEN AS PART OF THE CAMPUS REMEDY BID. OKAY. YEAH, SO I'LL TALK TO THEM AND WE'LL GET A REMEDY FOR THAT. YEAH. ALL RIGHT. SO WE ARE READY TO SIGN THE CERTIFICATION DOCUMENTS.

It was so fast with his signatures. Just practice. Right.

I didn't stay with this one just because I need to scan it back in. So this is the state in the bag that has to go to REC. And then these are our local results, which as you can see, we only had two local candidates, our sheriff and our circuit court. And no other party had any candidates for COVID.

Quite a bit quicker than spring.

Spring, everybody likes that. We get a cop. We like the The only other thing that I have is just a friendly reminder that we obviously have the general election coming up, the midterms on November 3rd. And so obviously we're in preparation for that. I actually already have a ballot proof Ready to go? So hopefully we can get that out because we have an order of about 750,000 pieces of paper that we have to get from the printer. So it is my hope to get it out to them a little bit earlier than normal.

With the increased scrutiny and rumors of any number of hijinks that may be happening with respect to the November general. If there's any reason for us to convene and meet as a board, um, let us, let us know. And we're happy to do so to make any decisions or prepare, make any preparations, alterations, whatever that we may need to do in advance of the election.

Great. I appreciate that.

Second to that.

And I don't have anything else.

All right. I think we can adjourn. Do you have anything else? I have,

Yeah, thanks, guys. We appreciate you. Appreciate you coming in. And again, kudos to Michelle and her staff. We handled it well. I'm glad that we had a helmet there as well. It was helpful, to say the least. And looking forward to the fall. Thank you so much. Thanks, George. Hope you feel better. Thank you, guys. Take care.