Milwaukee Elections Head Misplaced Crucial Voting

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Police on the scene were pressured to stay silent.

A flash drive that contained crucial absentee voter information in the 2020 presidential election was briefly lost during the early morning hours of Wednesday Nov. 4 as the world waited for Milwaukee to reveal its ballot counts.

Sources within Milwaukee County law enforcement told Wisconsin Right Now exclusively that the executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, Claire Woodall-Vogg, realized she had lost the flash drive when she left, with police escort, the Central Count building where ballots were tallied. She was en route to the county courthouse to report “the results of more than 169,000 absentee ballots collected in the City of Milwaukee,” the Hill previously reported.

Those results would prove to heavily weight toward Vice President Joe Biden in the critical battleground state. Biden would go on to win the state with the slimmest of margins (20,540 votes), although President Donald Trump’s campaign says he will request a recount.

We’ve met a brick wall of silence and stonewalling in our attempt to get more details about what happened around 3 a.m. when the drive suddenly couldn’t be located by Woodall-Vogg, according to our sources.

We reached out to the Milwaukee Police Department Office of Public Relations, and asked Sgt. Efrain Cornejo for comment. Cornejo referred us to the FBI and the Milwaukee County DA’s Office for comment. Neither responded with comment.

We reached out to Claire Woodall-Vogg multiple times on Friday for comment, and we were told she was working, however she did not return any phone call or email to explain what happened. In particular, we wanted her to explain if the chain of custody was breached and, if so, for how long? And how she can assure voters that no one else had access to the flash drive during the time period she didn’t have possession of it. We also wanted more information about what important information was on it. She did not respond.

Calls and emails for comment were also made to Mayor Tom Barrett’s office, and the Milwaukee County Election Commission. There have been no responses at all. Our sources did not want to be named for fear of retaliation, although they are in a position to know the information they imparted; such is the urgency behind the scenes over the matter. One officer reported the incident to a supervisor out of concern, we were told.

According to sources, Woodall-Vogg became panic stricken when she realized she had lost one of the several flash drives. She stressed the importance of the missing drive and indicated it was urgent to find it, the sources said. Woodall-Vogg made phone calls and an unidentified female later handed her the flash drive stating something to the effect of that it was what she needed. It’s not clear how long it was missing, but the situation has caused a stir within the Police Department and ignited a wall of stonewalling.

Sources tell Wisconsin Right Now that police on the scene were pressured to stay silent and that police felt threatened by district attorney investigators and election personnel, who were present during the incident and didn’t want them to tell anyone what happened.

We went to an address listed for one of the officers in question to get more details but didn’t get a response. We were told that officers fear retaliation if they speak out about what happened.

We reached out to Milwaukee County DA prosecutor Joshua Mathy of the public integrity unit and DA John Chisholm’s spokesman Kent Lovern for comment. They did not respond.

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