MONROE, Wis. — Election officials in Green County and Milwaukee said technology glitches and human errors disrupted the reporting of primary election results Tuesday night, forcing manual workarounds and delaying the publication of unofficial totals.
Server communication breakdown in Green County
Green County Clerk Arianna Voegeli said the county discovered a problem around 9 p.m. when some results had reached the county server but could not be accessed by the county’s reporting software because the files were encrypted and the software was not communicating with the server.
“We could see the results files sitting on the server, but because they're encrypted files, you have to have that results software to be able to open and access those files,” Voegeli said.
At the time the county noticed the issue, results from 16 municipalities had arrived on the server. County staff contacted their vendor, Liberty Vote, and spent several hours trying to identify the cause. When the vendor was unable to resolve the problem Tuesday night, local clerks and county workers switched to contingency procedures.
Manual entry and memory cards used to recover results
Faced with inaccessible encrypted files, municipal clerks provided election-night results to the county either by phone or by sending copies of their paper results tapes, allowing county staff to manually enter numbers into the reporting system. The next morning, clerks brought physical election materials to the Green County Clerk’s Office.
Among those materials were the memory cards used in precinct tabulators. Voegeli said the cards contain the tabulator database, ballot images and log files. By inserting those cards into the county’s system, staff were able to load the tabulator data directly into the reporting software.
“You put them in. It takes about 15 to 20 seconds. It loads all that information in, and then we just review it, and then we can validate and publish from there,” Voegeli said. Green County reached 100% reporting of its unofficial results around 11:30 a.m. Wednesday.
Separate Milwaukee transfer error
Milwaukee experienced a different problem on election night that officials attributed to human error during the transfer of results. Milwaukee Elections Director Paulina Gutierrez said staff mistakenly downloaded audit logs onto five memory sticks instead of the election result files, preventing those drives from being used to upload totals.
What this means for voters and local clerks
The incidents underscore the reliance of local election offices on both technology and procedural safeguards. When either fails, clerks fall back on paper records and physical media. In Green County, paper tapes and memory cards provided alternative paths to reconstructing the totals and completing the reporting process.
- Immediate impact: Delayed posting of unofficial results for affected municipalities and counties.
- Short-term remedy: Manual data entry from paper tapes and direct loading from tabulator memory cards.
- Longer-term concern: The need to ensure robust vendor support, staff training and clear procedures for handling encrypted files and memory media.
Election infrastructure resilience and public confidence
County clerks and election administrators said the primary goal was to secure accurate results and maintain transparency during the recovery. Officials emphasized the value of physical backups: paper tapes printed by tabulators and removable media that store the same records as electronic transmissions.
While vendors and local officials troubleshoot technical issues, the episodes could fuel public scrutiny of the systems used to compile and report election results. For now, local clerks point to the multiple redundant records that exist in most jurisdictions as the key reason they were able to recover and publish totals without changing the underlying vote counts.
| County | Issue | Remedy |
|---|---|---|
| Green County | Server not communicating with results software; encrypted files inaccessible | Manual entry from tapes; loading data from tabulator memory cards |
| Milwaukee | Memory sticks contained audit logs instead of results due to human error | Not yet reported in source; staff identified the mistaken downloads |
County clerks and election directors typically have protocols for incidents that prevent automated reporting, but the events Tuesday night could prompt reviews of vendor responsiveness and staff procedures statewide. For voters seeking timely results, officials recommend relying on county election websites and the Wisconsin Elections Commission for final, certified returns, which follow additional verification steps.
As election offices investigate the specifics of what went wrong and how it was resolved, officials stressed the integrity of the vote totals compiled from physical records and the redundancy built into election-reporting systems.
Peter Vandenberg, State Correspondent
