Overnight ‘ballot dump’ in Milwaukee not proof of fraud | Fact check

A Nov. 12 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows a chart that depicts the vote count over time in the U.S. Senate race in Wisconsin between incumbent Democrat Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Republican challenger Eric Hovde.
The chart, originally posted on X, formerly Twitter, shows Baldwin pulling ahead of Hovde after 4 a.m. on Nov. 6, the morning after Election Day.
“Once again, a 3:30am ballot dump lost us a critical race in Wisconsin,” reads the X post.The Facebook post reads, “This senate seat was stolen from Eric Hovde!!”
The X post was reposted more than 1,800 times in two days. Similar posts were shared on Facebook.
Hovde also amplified the notion that the late-night reporting was somehow questionable, saying in a video posted on X he was “shocked” by the overnight results.
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The chart in the posts isn’t evidence of fraud. It shows the number of votes counted for Baldwin increasing when the city of Milwaukee reported its absentee ballot results, which officials had long warned wouldn’t be available until the wee hours of the morning.
Baldwin withstood a challenge from Hovde, a banking and real estate mogul, to win re-election. The Associated Press called the race on the afternoon of Nov. 6, and Baldwin has declared victory.
With 99% of the state’s votes counted, Baldwin led Hovde 49.4% to 48.5% – a gap of 28,958 votes, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. Hovde had not conceded as of Nov. 13.
But contrary to the post’s claim, the race between Baldwin and Hovde wasn’t swayed by a fraudulent “ballot dump” in the early morning hours of Nov. 6. The chart shows Baldwin’s vote total increasing when the city of Milwaukee reported its absentee ballot results.
Wisconsin is one of seven states that don’t allow absentee ballots to be processed before Election Day. A bipartisan effort to change the law failed in March.
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“The late-night addition of ballots in the city of Milwaukee is a regular and expected part of the vote counting process in Wisconsin,” Barry Burden, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told USA TODAY.
City officials warned before the election results would come long after the polls closed. And the pro-Baldwin tilt was far from surprising.
“Because Milwaukee is a large jurisdiction and leans strongly to the Democrats, the addition of absentee ballots from the city always shifts the count in the direction of Democratic candidates,” Burden said.
Baldwin gained 88,229 votes from the city’s absentee ballots, while Hovde received 17,699 such votes, according to the Milwaukee Election Commission.
Milwaukee is one of dozens of communities in Wisconsin that uses a central count system for absentee ballots, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. As a result, the city’s absentee ballots were reported together after being counted at a central location.
The process was also delayed on Election Day when officials decided to recount more than 30,000 absentee ballots after an observer noticed that doors over the on-off switches on some vote-counting machines were not properly closed. The city delivered its absentee ballot results to the county shortly before 3:30 a.m. Nov. 6, and the results were uploaded to the county’s website about an hour later, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
USA TODAY debunked similar claims of fraud when the city’s absentee ballot results gave Joe Biden a lead over Donald Trump in the state during the 2020 election. This time, the overall results in Milwaukee show Vice President Kamala Harris received 191,397 votes and Trump received 51,691 votes. Still, Trump won Wisconsin by nearly 30,000 votes.
“The conspiracy theory that city officials were rigging things in favor of Democrats does not square with the fact that Trump won the state,” Burden said.USA TODAY reached out to the Facebook user and X user who shared the claim for comment but didn’t immediately receive responses.
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