MILWAUKEE — Tuesday is Election Day and it is important to note a late-night surge in votes does not mean election fraud. It simply is the process Milwaukee and the state follows to count votes.
Long-time Milwaukee voter Joe Spasiano says for more than 20 years he’s voted in elections and stayed up late to see the results.
“I wait up to see them,” said Spasiano.
But why he has to wait up, he does not know.
“No, no idea,” said Spasiano.
The short answer, it is usually the absentee ballots that are still being counted and it is a long process, according to Michelle Hawley, the director of the Elections Commission for Milwaukee County.
Under Wisconsin state law, no votes, including mailed-in absentee ballots, can be counted until 7 a.m. on Election Day.
"It's not just opening a bunch of envelopes and counting the ballots. There's a very meticulous process that goes into ensuring that the absentee ballot is counted correctly. And that it's eligible to be counted,” said Hawley.
On top of that, election officials have to wait until every absentee ballot has been counted including the ones handed in at 8 p.m. on election night, and then they can give the results. Many municipalities count those ballots in their wards. In the City of Milwaukee, it is all done at Central Count.
During the 2020 presidential election, that’s where the surge in late-night results came from, the high number of absentee votes. However, that is common in Milwaukee County which has the state's biggest population. We saw that also happen during the 2018 election when TMJ4 reported the results of the absentee ballots that decided the governor’s election between Tony Evers and Scott Walker at 12:51 a.m.
University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Political Scientist Mordecai Lee says he would not be surprised to see a very close race on Tuesday where the absentee votes could make a difference in who wins. He says in 2020, absentee voters tended to be Democrats, but that's not necessarily the case with this election where we’ve already seen both parties vote early.
"There are no voices discouraging people who are routinely Republican from voting early compared to people who are routinely Democratic,” said Lee. "There are states where more Republicans respond than Democrats."
The City of Milwaukee's Central Count will be at the Wisconsin Center.