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    Senator Ron Johnson is questioning Milwaukee’s recount of 30,000 absentee ballots

    Vaseline Posted on

    Republican Sen. Ron Johnson raised concerns about the 31,000 absentee ballots that the city of Milwaukee said it began counting Tuesday afternoon after election officials were notified that the doors covering the power switches on some of the machines used to to count votes, had not been closed properly.

    The city’s top elections official said earlier in the evening that the machines had not been tampered with and that the decision to recount the ballots was made out of an “abundance of caution” and in consultation with Democrats and Republicans.

    Johnson labeled the vote-counting process in the state’s heavily Democratic city as “grossly disorganized” during a visit to the downtown operation with Brian Schimming, chairman of the Republican Party of Wisconsin.

    Johnson questioned Paulina Gutiérrez, executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, during the tour.

    Schimming said they wanted to trust the process, but said he thought it was “fair” to ask questions when an issue involving so many ballots comes up.

    City officials said they would redo about 31,000 absentee ballots “out of an abundance of caution,” and a top state election official said that “both political parties agree there was nothing wrong with the tabulation so far.”

    Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson dismissed the senator’s questions about whether the city was unprepared for the high-profile election during a visit after Republicans left.

    And he said he didn’t think the error would become fodder for those seeking to undermine the results of the more than 100,000 absentee ballots returned to the city’s elections board.

    “This was an issue that was noticed, an issue that was addressed and an issue that we took seriously,” the mayor said. “We worked to resolve the issue and ensure all ballots were counted and counted correctly.”

    In the 2020 election, then-President Donald Trump and other Republicans targeted Milwaukee’s absentee ballots as he made baseless claims of election fraud in his bid to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden in Wisconsin.

    Trump’s 2020 loss in the state was confirmed by recounts he paid for, court rulings, a nonpartisan state audit and an investigation by a prominent conservative group.

    However, the senator said he would like officials to preserve video footage of the process and counting of the 30,000 ballots in question, both before and after the rerun.

    The Oshkosh Republican said the party wanted to know the results of the first tabulation of the ballots so they could compare them to the replay.

    “If we don’t have that, I become very suspicious,” he told reporters shortly after 8 p.m. local time.

    “We need to know what those counts are, not just the number of ballots, but how many votes for Kamala Harris, how many votes for Donald Trump,” the Republican senator said.

    Schimming, who joined Johnson at the central count, told the Journal Sentinel that he wanted to talk to election observers “and then we will decide how we move forward.”

    “We’re not here because there isn’t a problem,” Schimming said. ‘Things were open at the back of the tabulators. They had one job.”

    “It’s not that it’s illegal to ask questions about tabs that are open on tabulators in a state where we don’t have voting machines,” Schimming said.

    Alison Dirr can be reached at [email protected]. Lawrence Andrea can be reached at [email protected].

    Vaseline
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