No major issues reported in Milwaukee so far on Election Day

Voters in Milwaukee streamed to the polls amidst overcast skies and rainy weather on Election Day. Some polling sites reported high turnout while several police departments in the Milwaukee area said there were minimal reported incidents. 

At Milwaukee’s South Division High School, located on the predominantly Latino South Side, voters arrived and checked in. The polling site’s chief election worker said shortly before noon that 63 people had arrived. Outside, poll chaplains standing with umbrellas who were there to make sure voters could cast their ballots without interference said that there had been no issues so far, an observation echoed by the chief poll worker. 

In the leadup to the midterm elections, anxiety was high that federal agents would be deployed to polling locations in certain neighborhoods, including those with large numbers of immigrant families. Milwaukee is one of two cities in Wisconsin where the Department of Homeland Security sent election monitors for the midterms, in an effort pro-democracy groups criticized for targeting Democratic strongholds and minority communities..

In a statement sent shortly before 2 p.m., the Milwaukee Police Department told the Wisconsin Examiner that the department had responded to three incidents related to the election. Milwaukee officers responded to a high school — the department did not specify which one — where there were complaints about election signs being stolen. Officers determined that the signs had been placed in a right of way where they were not allowed, and no arrests were made. 

Officers also responded to a college campus in Milwaukee following a report that individuals were possibly too close to the entrance of a polling location with election materials. When officers arrived the individuals were no longer at the scene. The third incident was a motor vehicle crash involving a city vehicle conveying election workers who were transporting ballots. The workers had just dropped off the ballots and were involved in the accident as they were leaving. Two election workers were transported to a local hospital, as well as the driver of the vehicle that struck them. 

When asked whether things were quiet, Waukesha Police Capt. Dan Baumann said in an emailed statement to the Examiner “we don’t use that ‘Q’ word,” adding, “I’m knocking on wood as I type but all things are going well on the home front.” Lt. Nicholas Wenzel of the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department also said that he had not heard of any election-related incidents. The Wauwatosa and West Allis Police Departments did not respond to a request for comment. 

WISN 12 News reported that multiple polling locations had reported technical issues, including the Saveland Park Pavilion on the South Side. By 10:22 a.m. the issue, involving 100 ballots which could not be read into the machine, had been resolved. Milwaukee Election Commissioner Patricia Ruiz-Cantú said the issues with machines were resolved easily, and mentioned that one location had ballots without Voter ID numbers. Ruiz-Cantú said that the ballots were audited and found to be eligible voters casting legitimate ballots and that this was the result of a clerical error. 

Over 462,000 Wisconsinites had cast their ballot during in-person absentee voting by the time polling locations opened Tuesday morning. Nearly 797,000 ballots have been returned to the Milwaukee municipal clerk to be counted today.