After a minor procedural slip during the August 11 primary, Milwaukee election officials released audit logs that show the city’s absentee ballot tabulators functioned as intended. Independent experts confirmed the logs contain no signs of vote manipulation.
Expert analysis finds no tampering
Duncan Buell, chair emeritus of computer science and engineering at the University of South Carolina, said the logs “show no evidence that anything was done outside the norm.” Election consultant Ryan Macias, who previously worked for the Election Assistance Commission’s certification arm, agreed, noting there were “no signs or evidence that anything was done outside the norm” between the initial error and the correct extraction of results.
Jennifer Morrell, CEO of The Elections Group, reviewed the logs with her team and found they matched the public account exactly. She observed that “in the roughly two hours between those two exports, there’s no scanning or counting activity recorded on any of those five machines,” and that the ballot counts on every machine matched the official totals.
What caused the delay
During the initial extraction, officials mistakenly selected “export audit log” instead of “export files” on five of the nine tabulators, a mistake that occurred between 10:15 p.m. and about 10:40 p.m. The machines were then locked. Realizing the error, staff restarted the devices around 11:30 p.m. and correctly exported the results shortly after midnight. The audit logs show no ballots were scanned, no votes were deleted, and no data was altered.
The error delayed the reporting of results by only a few hours and did not affect the final vote count.
City’s response and new safeguards
Milwaukee election chief Paulina Gutiérrez announced several procedural changes to prevent a repeat. New written instructions will include screenshots showing the correct on‑screen selections, and these instructions will be available to observers at the absentee ballot facility. Extraction teams will receive briefings before downloading results, and team members will verbally confirm each step so peers can verify proper execution.
Gutiérrez told the Wisconsin Elections Commission, “The discrepancy was identified, the underlying election results remained intact, the correct files were retrieved, and Milwaukee’s accurate election results were ultimately reported.”
Why releasing the logs matters
Although the audit logs are not routinely published, Morrell said releasing them demonstrates transparency and accountability. She noted that the logs’ existence and public availability are positive signs, even though the release took three weeks after the primary.
Overall, the independent review affirms that Milwaukee’s election infrastructure functioned correctly and that the city is taking steps to strengthen its processes for future elections.
Original reporting: Wisconsin Watch — read the source article.
