The votes are in—and then what? A reminder to be patient and wait for all of the results.

More than 1,800 local clerks and many more of your Wisconsin friends and neighbors have got this—another secure election.

You may not like how any single election turns out in Wisconsin—it’s always rough when your favorite candidate doesn’t win a race—but claiming an election is rigged is childish, lazy, and based on absolutely no plausible scenario that shows a catastrophic flaw in the system. In short, patience is what’s most needed on election night, not rumors or conspiracies.

Wisconsin’s “election” is actually made up of more than 1,800 separate local elections. There is no central administration. The Wisconsin Elections Commission provides the rules and guidance, but the actual work is done in each municipality. Good luck trying to rig 1,800 separate elections.

“It’s not possible,” said Rebecca Draeger, former Eau Claire deputy city clerk. “We’ve tried to think of ways that it maybe could be done, but we have never made it to the end. When we try to do scenarios on how it could possibly be done, we never make it to the end of that scenario because there’s no way.”

To be clear, Draeger is talking about the inability for someone to slip in a single fraudulent ballot. One. Now try to figure out how to make that 20,000 or more—to swing a presidential result. There’s a reason you’ve never read or seen any credible reports about doing it: because it’s a fantasy. Plus, each polling place has a number of observers—some partisan, some nonpartisan—who can see each voter being checked in and each ballot going into a tabulator. Notice that not one on-site observer raised alarms in 2016.

Perhaps no city’s vote tabulations will be watched more closely than in Milwaukee, a perpetual source of grist for the rumor mill. After all, this is the city where Republican Bob Spindell, who served 18 years as a Milwaukee election commissioner and is now on the state elections commission—despite being one of the fake electors for former President Donald Trump in his 2020 plot to overturn the Wisconsin result—bragged following the 2022 midterm election about efforts to depress Black and Hispanic voter turnout in Milwaukee

Paulina Gutierrez, an experienced city employee, was appointed city elections administrator earlier this year. Gutierrez told the Associated Press she’s confident in her abilities, her team, and the checks and balances of having a smooth election and an accurate count.

“I have been dedicating my entire career to public service,” Gutierrez said. “I am born and raised in the city of Milwaukee. My family lives here. I am dedicated to ensuring that we have safe, secure and fair elections.”

Spindell said he doesn’t know Gutierrez but praised how the August primary was run and said the city is ready for November.

“It appears everything is working out pretty well,” he said. “I have not heard complaints from anybody.”

So what about those middle-of-the-night swings in vote totals? That’s the result of living in a state with millions of people. In more than three-dozen communities, that multitude of votes isn’t counted at each of the many polling locations. Instead, the secured ballots are brought to a central counting facility and run through machines that have been repeatedly audited. Again, witnesses are invited and they watch the count unfold. As far as “swings” go, it’s because rural areas (typically Republican) report their votes first because there aren’t as many in each individual ward. Urban areas (typically Democratic) have many more votes that have to be delivered to a central count facility, processed, totaled up, and reported—so an early Republican lead is often known as a “red mirage” since it reflects only a partial view of how Wisconsin voted.

By the way, there was a bill in the Legislature to address late-night reporting. Local clerks cannot tabulate absentee ballots until Election Day. If they were able to process them the day before (to make sure voter information on the envelope is correct), the election night count could get done a lot sooner. The idea enjoys bipartisan public support because it makes sense. But Republican legislators refused to do that favor for local clerks. They’d rather keep in place (and amplify) the phony suspicions than make elections even more credible than they already are.

Even with dedicated clerks, diligent poll workers, and trustworthy processes, Wisconsin’s status as a swing state means some elections are going to have razor-thin margins. Some races may require a recount, so it’s entirely possible we won’t have a final slate of results until days later. 

So pack your patience on election night. Pay zero attention to results until you start getting a broad sampling of the state’s full electorate. If your candidate wins, be graceful. If your candidate loses, be respectful—especially of the thousands of Wisconsin neighbors who keep elections safe and secure. We thank them for their service and we hope you now perform the highest service of citizenship: Go vote.