Milwaukee County voter turnout exceeds 100% in some wards; here's how

MILWAUKEE - It's something you might not think is possible when it comes to an election, but some Milwaukee County wards reported voter turnout greater than 115%.

That led U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde to question the security of the election, as he explained why he still hadn't conceded the race.

"Numerous parties have reached out to me about voting inconsistencies, such as certain voting precincts in Milwaukee having turnout of over 150% of registered voters and in some cases over 200%," he stated in a video he posted on social media.

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Voter turnout more than 100%

FOX6 crunched the numbers on Milwaukee County’s more than 500 wards, which had a county-wide turnout of 88.9%.

The county’s unofficial election night results showed 25 wards with turnout of 100% or greater, including one place topping 200%.

The unofficial Milwaukee County results did show Wauwatosa Ward 8B had voter turnout of 249%. At the same time, those results showed ward 8A with turnout of 34%

FOX6 News questioned the Milwaukee County Election Commission Director Michelle Hawley about the numbers. She then discovered she had accidentally flipped the registered voter numbers for wards 8A and 8B, a mistake that didn't impact the vote counts.

Likewise, the county says it flipped registered voter numbers in Franklin. Ward 14 initially showed turnout of 183%.

"It’s not like any extra ballots were actually counted or registered in any of those wards?" asked Milwaukee County Election Commissioner Timothy Posnanski during the county's meeting to certify the election results.

"Correct. Total ballots cast and total registered voters in the city remain the same, so the total percentage of turnout is the same, it’s just the ward by ward looked a little bit wonky. We want to make sure we clarify that," replied Hawley.

The corrected numbers show the same number of votes cast as the earlier, unofficial results; the corrected numbers showed more modest voter turnout in the 90s.

Some Milwaukee County wards did, in fact, top 100%

Milwaukee Ward 335 hit 148% voter turnout and Ward 187 topped 118%.

Both are inside Marquette University's campus, with voting at the Alumni Memorial Union.

"Everyone trying to get involved. I think this was a pretty important election for everybody," said Parker Gugala, a Marquette student from Wauwatosa.

Gugala, who lives at Marquette, saw the large turnout as he waited in line for an hour just to register to vote.

"I think a lot of the social media has been going crazy, covering the election, so kids are seeing that, and then they’re wanting to put their own voice out there," added Gugala.

Milwaukee's Ward 186 had 126% turnout. It is nearby campus and includes Marquette housing.

Ward 126 had 115% turnout. It’s the UW-Milwaukee campus.

And then there’s the city’s Ward 158 with 105% turnout. That's the Milwaukee School of Engineering.

"Our poll books, our voter rolls are being cleaned, they’re being updated, and voters are being inactivated as they move," said Claire Woodall, Senior Advisor with Issue One. "So, going into Election Day, we had very accurate poll lists, and on Election Day, anybody who moved, and hadn’t updated their registration, you frequently see it around campuses, like UWM and Marquette, with dorms, those voters are going to register on Election Day, and it increases that turnout percentage of registered voters over 100%."

While many college students weren't old enough to vote four years ago, those who were eligible to vote in previous elections may have found their registrations inactive this year.

"After an election, after each school year, over the summer, we will do maintenance, removing those voters who moved from the dorms, off of the poll lists, making them inactive and they haven’t yet taken that proactive step to re-register. So, you’re seeing less active voters on the poll books, and then voters updating on Election Day, because we allow same-day registration, which ends up skewing those numbers," Woodall added.

One more City of Milwaukee ward, Ward 350, had 120% turnout. That was because six people voted in the ward, which had five registered voters before Election Day.

Local voter turnout can show numbers higher than 100% 

The numbers come from registered voters before polls open, while Wisconsin law allows people to register to vote on Election Day.

Same-day registrations have been strong in the city of Milwaukee.

According to John Johnson, a Marquette Lubar Center Research Fellow, in 2020, about 21,000 people registered to vote at their Milwaukee polling place on Election Day.

In 2016, he found about 44,000 same-day registrations, and in 2012, it was roughly 54,000 in the city.

"This is completely normal, it happens every year. Anyone who pays attention to elections in Wisconsin knows this," Johnson said of the greater-than 100%-turnout in some wards.

FOX6 did a story earlier in the week on the five wards in Oak Creek that had 100% or 101% voter turnout. You can check out that story here.

With high numbers of registrations at college campuses, Johnson found President-elect Trump did better this year with younger voters, including in wards around UW-Madison, UW-La Crosse, UW-Whitewater.

"Trump’s share of the vote increased by about 9% points in the wards surrounding Marquette University," added Johnson. "Rational Republicans look at these election results in Milwaukee and say, ‘Wow, this is a good year for us.’ The Republican Party was more popular in the city of Milwaukee this year than it was four years ago, than it was eight years ago, and they see that as a win. It is only these conspiracy theorists who have this story in their mind that Milwaukee is untrustworthy that actually blinds them to the fact that they had momentum here this year."

Johnson found that in majority-Black wards in Wisconsin, the former President did about 2 points better than he did in 2020 and 5 points better than 2016. He also found in majority Latino wards, Trump improved from 2020 by about 10 points. While compared with 2016, Trump in 2024 improved about 19 points in those Latino wards.

Johnson says numbers across the state showed Hovde trailing the vote totals of Trump.

"Hovde did a little bit worse than Trump just about everywhere, with the exception of the WOW [Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington] counties," said Johnson. "People like incumbents in Wisconsin, we see a small, one-or-two-point advantage for incumbents pretty consistently."

When all the votes were counted, Wisconsin elected a Republican for president and a Democrat for U.S. Senate.

Other issues clarified

One issue Hovde brings up in his online video is that the third party candidates won 71,000 votes, more than the difference between Hovde and Baldwin.

The AP reported that Democrats did recruit one of those candidates, Thomas Leager, who ran with the party name "America First." On his website, he says he was lied to as he was recruited.

Another issue Eric Hovde brings up is the late-night spike for Senator Baldwin.

But Republican number-crunchers knew that spike was coming. FOX6 reported their worries on election night, when Hovde had a 68,000-vote lead. They knew Milwaukee's 108,000 absentee ballots would give a big boost to Baldwin, because it's a city that votes 75% or more Democratic. Those absentee ballots can't be reported to the county until all of the city's absentee ballots are counted.

It was also known ahead of time that it would take many hours to count the absentee ballots, which Milwaukee's election director Paulina Gutierrez estimated would be sometime after midnight. 

Wisconsin is one of just a few states that does not allow election workers to process absentee ballots until polls open on Election Day. It takes time for the pair of election workers to open up the outer envelopes, and then check the required signatures on the inner envelopes. And then they run those ballots through the tabulators. It all takes time and FOX6 crews were there the whole time, along with bipartisan election observers, monitoring the counting.

Eric Hovde's video also said Sen. Baldwin won nearly 90% of Milwaukee's absentee ballots. In fact, she won 82%.

Compared with Election Day in-person voting, she got 72%.

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The City of Milwaukee's unofficial results showed 136,465 total U.S. Senate votes for in-person voting on Election Day:

• Baldwin: 75%
• Hovde: 21%

The results showed 107,568 total absentee votes (both by-mail and in-person voting):

• Baldwin: 82%
• Hovde: 16%

Polls ahead of Election Day showed that those voting by mail were overwhelmingly Democrats.