Top Milwaukee election official calls on Gov. Scott Walker to apologize for accusing city of 'incompetence' in ballot count

Mary Spicuzza | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Milwaukee's top election official is calling on Gov. Scott Walker to apologize for accusing the city of "incompetence" when it came to counting thousands of absentee ballots in this month's election.

Some Republicans have questioned the city's more than 47,000 absentee ballots, which were reported late and helped boost Democratic challenger Tony Evers to a win over Walker.

In his first comments to reporters after his loss, Walker said last week that he was blindsided by news that Milwaukee's absentee ballots were still being counted.

"I think it was a shock to everybody when suddenly there were 47,000 more votes that had not been counted. Now, we sent a team of lawyers down there, and I also know the media showed up," Walker said Thursday. "In the end, I think it was more of a question of incompetence as opposed to corruption."

Neil Albrecht, the executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, called those comments a "mischaracterization of what occurred," adding that it "warrants an apology to the city’s nearly 2,500 election workers that approached their assignments with a profound sense of civic duty, responsibility, and integrity."

"To make an allegation that Milwaukee’s administration of the midterm election lacked competence is unsubstantiated, reckless and damaging to the public’s confidence in the integrity of elections," Albrecht wrote in a Nov. 16 letter to Walker. "Your claim is particularly egregious given your and the Wisconsin Legislature’s inaction to proactively address the issue that led to the delay in processing ballots."

But it appears Walker has no intention of apologizing for his comments.

"Milwaukee County election officials released incomplete information during the early hours of election night. They claimed 100% of ballots had been counted," Walker spokeswoman Amy Hasenberg said in a Monday email. "However, 47,000 absentee ballots remained. Milwaukee County never should have claimed all ballots were in when there were absentee ballots waiting to be counted."

Milwaukee County was reporting almost all of its precincts had already reported, but that isn't the same as ballots. Some municipalities, including the City of Milwaukee, report absentee ballots separately from polling places, or precincts.

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Albrecht and other city officials have repeatedly said Milwaukee followed state election laws, and that observers from Walker's campaign were present, as well as representatives of the political parties and members of the public.

"At no point did any person issue a challenge to what was occurring," he wrote. "Rather, observers expressed appreciation that the nearly 200 people that supported the city’s central counting of absentee ballot operations were well-trained and operated with efficiency, fairness, and transparency."

Albrecht said the two-hour delay processing absentee ballots was due to a variety of factors, including having to reconstruct ballots that were damaged in the mail or because they were exposed to adhesives from envelopes.

"The need to reconstruct a ballot is in no way an indication of incompetence but rather a process that occurs in every municipality in this state during the tallying of absentee ballots," he wrote. "The public’s interest in early voting in Milwaukee, in Wisconsin, and nationally, has increased exponentially with each general election."

Milwaukee officials, as well as other municipal and county clerks, have been lobbying state lawmakers to change Wisconsin's early voting laws so absentee ballots would no longer have to be counted on election day. But Republicans who control the state Legislature have so far blocked those efforts.

"Numerous opportunities to address this issue, such as establishing true early voting in Wisconsin or allowing clerks to begin opening absentee envelopes the day before the election, were presented to the Legislature and largely ignored," Albrecht wrote. "The blame for Wisconsin’s myriad antiquated election laws that fail to address emerging election issues and lead to delays in the publication of election results rests with you and the Legislature, not with the City of Milwaukee Election Commission."