Democrats Accused of Rigging Their Own Primary After ‘Mistake’

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Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary delivered the kind of election-night drama guaranteed to send political social media into overdrive.

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley narrowly defeated democratic socialist state Rep. Francesca Hong after a late-night delay involving election-result flash drives in Milwaukee. The upset was particularly striking because Hong had enjoyed enormous advantages in some recent polling, yet Crowley ultimately prevailed by only a few thousand votes statewide.

Then came the technical problem.

Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Paulina Gutierrez said officials discovered that five of nine flash drives brought to central count contained audit logs instead of election results. Officials had to return to the operations center, download the proper results from five machines and send them back for uploading. Gutierrez described the problem as “human error” and agreed when asked whether somebody had essentially pressed the wrong button.

That is the sort of explanation election officials should expect voters to scrutinize, particularly during an extremely close race.

Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden publicly raised accusations about the Democratic primary, while questions and suspicions spread online. But the reporting error itself is not evidence that ballots were fabricated, changed or fraudulently added. Based on currently available reporting, election officials have described a mistake in transferring and reporting results, not an alteration of the underlying votes.

Still, election administrators should understand why this stuff looks terrible.

When a major city experiences a late-night reporting delay in an election decided by a razor-thin margin, “somebody pressed the wrong button” is not exactly the confidence-building explanation voters dream about. Transparency becomes especially important when the delayed jurisdiction is also politically significant to the outcome.

The final Milwaukee numbers were certainly important. WISN reported that Crowley received 65,131 votes in Milwaukee compared with Hong’s 62,739, giving Crowley a 2,392-vote advantage there.

The statewide result was similarly tight. The Associated Press called the race for Crowley, while other reporting placed his statewide advantage at just over 3,000 votes.

Hong’s defeat was particularly surprising because recent polling had shown her comfortably ahead. Wisconsin Public Radio reported that she had led some recent polling by as much as 30 percentage points. Yet a large pool of undecided voters and Crowley’s late campaign momentum made the final electorate considerably different from what those headline polling numbers suggested.

That polling miss, by itself, does not demonstrate election manipulation. Polls measure samples of voters and can be spectacularly wrong, a fact Americans hardly need explained after the last decade of elections.

The legitimate issue here is election administration.

Whether the candidate losing because of a reporting mistake is a socialist Democrat, a mainstream Democrat or a Republican should not matter. Election officials have an obligation to produce accurate results through procedures voters can understand and verify.

Milwaukee’s mistake deserves scrutiny precisely because confidence in elections depends upon competence and transparency.

Crowley is the projected Democratic nominee. Hong lost an extraordinarily close contest. And Milwaukee election officials have some explaining to do about how five of nine flash drives arrived without the necessary result files.

Calling that suspicious is an opinion. Calling it proven election fraud requires evidence that has not been established by the reporting currently available.

In an election this close, voters deserve facts, records and transparency, not assumptions from either side.