Milwaukee elections officials say a human error will delay reporting the results of about 28,000 absentee ballots by at least an hour.
The ballots could determine the winner in the tight race between democratic socialist Francesca Hong and more moderate challenger Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley.
Milwaukee Election Commission Director Paulina Gutierrez said human error was to blame for audit logs being uploaded onto flash drives instead of ballot results.
"All right. So, as part of the download process, there are two things. There's the audit log and the results. What we uncovered was that five of the sticks had the audit log downloaded and not the results. It's a human error. These things can happen," Gutiérrez said.
Gutiérrez said election officials will return to the operations center to re-download the results from the five machines and verify they are not downloading the audit log again.
"So, basically, what we need to do is go back to the operations center, and we're going to download out of those five machines the results and make sure that's not the audit log. So we have the reports printed from the first download. We're going to reprint and start the process so that we can compare those results," Gutiérrez said.
Hong spoke to her supporters late Tuesday night, saying, “We are ready to keep fighting.”
Crowley has not addressed his supporters as the race remains too early to call.
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