The city of Milwaukee is one of 39 municipalities in Wisconsin which count their voters’ absentee ballots at a central location. This is permitted by state law. Because several municipalities could not finish processing their absentee ballots by the time the polls closed at 8 p.m. on Election Day, there was a delay in reporting those results to county clerks. This was especially true in larger cities including Milwaukee, Green Bay and Kenosha, where final unofficial results were reported after 3 a.m. Wednesday.
This does not mean something went wrong – it means election officials did their jobs and made sure every valid ballot was counted. All central count locations were open to the public and the media, and some municipalities including Milwaukee and Green Bay took extra steps to provide the public and the media with live webcams of the absentee tabulation. Representatives of both major political parties were present, as well as independent poll watchers.
Despite this transparency, there have been unfounded allegations that clerks and poll workers stopped counting, that they mysteriously found absentee ballots in the middle of the night, or that all the votes on absentee ballots were only for one candidate. It’s just not true.
The numbers bear this out. In 2016, President Trump received 1,405,284 votes and won Wisconsin by 22,748 votes over Hillary Clinton, who received 1,382,536. In 2020, President Trump received 1,610,065 votes and lost by 20,682 votes to Joe Biden, who received 1,630,673.
In the city of Milwaukee, turnout was virtually the same. In 2016, there were 246,617 votes cast for president and in 2020 there were 246,956, an increase of 339 votes. That is a very small increase, especially considering all the effort that Democratic groups put into increasing turnout in Milwaukee.
In 2016, the city of Milwaukee voted 45,422 for Trump and 188,700 for Clinton. In 2020, the city of Milwaukee voted 48,414 for Trump and 194,661 for Biden.
In 2020, President Trump received 6.5% more votes in the city of Milwaukee than he did in 2016. Biden received 3.1% more votes in 2020 than Clinton received in 2016.
There were two significant differences in 2016 and 2020. The first was the numbers of votes received by third party, independent and write-in candidates for president. In 2016 there were 12,495 votes for other candidates, compared to 3,575 votes for other candidates in 2020. This is generally true across the state.
The second difference between the years is in the method voters used to cast their ballots. In 2016, there were approximately 61,000 absentee ballots counted in the city of Milwaukee. In 2020, there were 169,583 absentee ballots. The pandemic caused significantly higher numbers of voters across the state to vote by absentee ballot, and in larger cities which counted their absentee ballots at a central location, it took until early Wednesday for all the ballots to be counted and for unofficial results to be reported to the county clerks.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission anticipated there would be misinformation about late absentee ballot reports in central count municipalities. To let the people and the media know what to expect about counting and reporting absentee ballot totals, the WEC put out news releases in advance of the election and even produced a video about how results get reported.
See more videos about absentee voting here: https://elections.wi.gov/2020.