Nearly a dozen observers gathered at the City of Milwaukee Election Commission’s warehouse in the city’s Bay View neighborhood Saturday to watch as election workers conducted a public test of the equipment that will be used to tally votes on Nov. 5.

At one of the machines stood Election Commission Executive Director Paulina Gutiérrez fielding detailed questions from a group of eight. Behind her, test ballots whirred through one of the machines that lined the wall inside a back room of the warehouse.

The log of observers indicated that eight were from the Republican Party. Of the remaining three, one was listed as “Wisconsin Election Protection,” one was a member of the public and one was an employee of the company that makes the machines.

“Public testing is part of the statutory process of election preparation, but I think it really gives the public an opportunity to see how we do the work that we do and to see the machines and … familiarize themselves with those machines, and then also learn about our process,” Gutiérrez told reporters.

Municipalities must conduct the public test within 10 days before an election, a step meant to ensure that voting equipment programming is accurate, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

To ensure the election equipment is tallying results correctly, election officials feed a set of pre-marked ballots into each machine and review the results that are generated. The testing only ends when the count is free of errors, with any problems found in the testing being fixed before the equipment can be used in the election, according to the state Elections Commission.

Public test of election equipment comes as intense scrutiny of Milwaukee’s election process expected on Nov. 5

The public test comes just over a week before the city’s election administration is expected to again be under intense scrutiny in the tight race for the White House between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump in 2020 leaned into false claims, including about voting in Milwaukee, to try to undermine the election in which he lost the White House to his Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

Trump lost Wisconsin by about 21,000 votes, an outcome confirmed by recounts he paid for, court rulings, a nonpartisan state audit and a study by a prominent conservative group.

Gutiérrez on Saturday urged those with concerns about the city’s election process to participate in the process by serving as a poll worker.

And, she said, people who are conducting the election as poll workers are a bipartisan group consisting of members of the community.

“The staff that work for us are amazing staff,” she said. “It’s thousands of people that live and work in this community. They are your neighbors. They are your friends.”

Among the observers Saturday was Doug Kwikkel of Hartland.

The GOP volunteer said he wanted to come Saturday to see how the process works. He said he was comforted to see paper ballots being used and how “exacting” election officials were in their processes.

Kwikkel said he saw it as his duty as an American to participate.

A first-time election observer, Kwikkel said he got involved now because “this election is way too important for us not to get out and vote and participate.”

He plans to observe at one of the city’s polling places on Election Day, too, he said.

Election machines ‘passed the rigorous logic and accuracy standards’ ahead of Election Day

On Saturday, the city’s public test included all 13 high-speed “tabulators” that will be used to tally results from tens of thousands of absentee ballots at Milwaukee’s central county location and a sampling of the machines that will be used at the city’s 180 individual polling locations.

All machines that will be used to count votes on Nov. 5 were previously tested and “passed the rigorous logic and accuracy standards,” according to a city Election Commission spokesperson.

Gutiérrez has estimated that the city could receive 80,000 absentee ballots. As of 10:40 a.m. Saturday, the city had issued 65,487 absentee ballots and 49,067 had been returned. In-person absentee voting started Tuesday.

On Saturday, election officials used 5,000 test ballots that showed every possible combination of votes that could be on a ballot, Gutiérrez said. That is meant to test every seat on the ballot to make sure the machine is counting it accurately.

Once the public testing is over, all of the results on the machines are cleared to zero and then the machines are sealed. They will not be reopened until Election Day, when officials will check again that the machines have not been unsealed, she said.

The ballot counting process then begins, with two specially trained people working together, she said.

“In elections, it’s always a big paper trail, checks and balances,” she said. “And even after the election is over, there are multiple audits at multiple levels of government.”

Milwaukee absentee ballot results will be tallied at the Baird Center on Election Day

The results of the city’s absentee ballots will be tallied at the Baird Center in downtown Milwaukee on Election Day.

Once all the absentee ballots are counted, a second lengthy process begins.

Election Commission staff must export the results from each of the 13 machines that count the absentee votes onto thumb drives, which are then secured in a bag and taken by a bipartisan team to the Milwaukee County Courthouse in a police vehicle, Gutiérrez said. There, they are uploaded to the county’s election-night website, a process that also takes time.

In Wisconsin, the election process is open to the public to observe.

Milwaukee is likely to be one of the last, if not the last, to report its absentee ballot results.

Gutiérrez expects those results to be reported after midnight on Nov. 6.

Alison Dirr can be reached at adirr@jrn.com.