Racine County election results reporting error, clerk explains
RACINE COUNTY, Wis. - The Racine County Clerk told FOX6 she's investigating what caused "discrepancies" and "inaccuracies" in partial results on Election Day.
Wendy Christensen has led a lot of elections in her 15 years as Racine County Clerk, but she's never seen anything like what she saw on Tuesday, April 2.
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"Unusual totals that did not look right when you had an uncontested candidate with a lot of write-ins," she said.
Some numbers transmitted from polling places to the county were wrong.
"We always have the actual ballots that are always on paper. You can always go back to the physical ballots, and do a hand-count of something," said Christensen. "The tapes themselves were printed, and totaled at the polling locations before anything was transmitted here."
When a ballot is cast, tabulators count the votes and store the paper ballot. At the end of the night, the machines print out the results on paper, called "tapes." The results are then sent to the county electronically. However, on Tuesday, initial numbers calculated at the county level didn't match what the polling places sent.
"We are obviously going to do a full investigation because we want to know what happened, so it can never happen again," said Christensen.
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The county clerk did not provide a timeline for when the investigation would be completed, but she told FOX6 News her office is working with the vendors of the technology to figure out exactly what went wrong.
"I don’t want to go through the details of what that investigation now is going to entail, because I don’t want to speculate on what did or did not occur or how it happened until we know more information," Christensen said.
On election night, after the clerk discovered something was wrong, her office then had polling places phone in the results as found on the paper printouts from each machine. The municipal election officials also delivered their tapes to the county clerk's office, where staff confirmed the vote totals. 20 hours after polls closed, the county released the unofficial election night results. FOX6 asked Christensen if those preliminary results are now correct.
"They should be," said Christensen. "My entire team went through those physical tapes, from the polling locations."
The clerk's investigation continues, with the world getting ready to watch Wisconsin. This November, the state will play a key role in who wins the White House. Christensen said her office will be ready.
The Racine County Sheriff’s Office confirmed it is not investigating the matter. The Racine County Board of Canvass will meet next Tuesday, April 9, to certify the April 2 election results.
