Milwaukee Voter Turnout in the Disinformation Age
UPDATE: The Milwaukee City Wire article has been updated with the headline “Analysis: Five Milwaukee wards report 89% turnout in 2020 presidential vote; Biden nets 146K votes in city” and a new data table.
An anonymous article posted by Milwaukee City Wire is making the rounds on social media in the aftermath of the final unofficial tally of Wisconsin’s votes for the 2020 election. The article makes the claim that seven wards in the City of Milwaukee reported more votes than registered voters. The article makes a show of including a table with their calculations and notes the Milwaukee County Clerk and Wisconsin Secretary of State as sources.
There’s just one problem — the data in their chart does not actually reflect any of the data on the Milwaukee County Clerk’s website:
The seven wards referenced by Milwaukee City Wire as having more votes than voters actually look like this:
On a side note, the “Total Votes” included in the Milwaukee City Wire table are equal to the total of the Biden and Trump votes (an easy oversight for a seemingly made-up table). Of course there were additional votes for third parties contributing to the real total, 4,620 to be exact.
Full Analysis of All Wards Reported by Milwaukee County
The only ward which showed more votes than voters was the only River Hills ward, with 1,266 votes versus 186 registered voters (535 of the votes for Trump or 42%, relatively high for Milwaukee county). Given the magnitude of the error, this may be a data entry issue for the total registered voters.
The article also lists a number of statistics about voter turnout, seemingly to cast aspersions on the legitimacy of the vote totals. For one, the article compares the Milwaukee turn out of 84% to that of 2016, 75%. Although, we once again find discrepancies in the data:
While Milwaukee County had an 84% turnout (83.7% to be more precise), the turnout for the City of Milwaukee was actually only 78.5%. Further, the City of Milwaukee actually had the lowest turnout for municipalities in Milwaukee County. If the City of Milwaukee is suspicious for 78.5% turnout, then surely Franklin is suspicious with 93.6% or Oak Creek with 93.2%, both of which had some of the highest vote percentages for Trump.
“But what about how significantly the City of Milwaukee swung for Biden?”
It’s true that 78.6% is a high percentage of the vote to go for Biden, but Shorewood, a near-Milwaukee suburb who reported at 10:28pm, puts that number to shame at 82.7%. Additionally, it’s in line with previous elections:
While we are here, take a look at registered voters. There’s actually fewer registered voters in the City of Milwaukee this year than there were in 2016. In fact, there’s been a steady decrease of registered voters in Milwaukee since 2004.
“Wisconsin allows for voter registration on election day, so what happened with registration on election day? Any funny business?”
While we cannot currently parse out how many day-of registrations there were in 2020, Wisconsin’s Elections Commission regularly posts voter registration totals, with the most recent post before the election being on November 1st, 2020 (two days before the election). That posting put the City of Milwaukee registration at 317,957, actually higher than the total registered accounted for in the unofficial vote tally for the 2020 election (possibly a discrepancy between Elections Commission reporting and City of Milwaukee reporting).
As another data point, from the Elections Commissions posts on November 2, 2016 (pre-election) to November 16, 2016 (post-election), the City of Milwaukee voter registration increased by 798 voters, a 0.24% increase.
“Is any of this some how out of line with other counties in Wisconsin?”
Well, let’s take a look at the infamously red Waukesha, Ozaukee, and Washington counties (WOW). Surely, they will be an interesting juxtaposition to blue Milwaukee County:
Milwaukee County’s turnout is actually lower than that of Ozaukee, Washington, and Waukesha. Furthermore, their increase in turnout is in line with those counties (with the exception of Ozaukee, which saw a larger increase of ~6%). Ozaukee and Washington also saw significant increases in their registered voters between 2016 and 2020. Milwaukee County proves out to not be significantly more blue than Washington County is red.
Side note: If you are for some reason weirded out by Milwaukee County’s total vote equaling 460,300 because it’s a round number by the hundreds, take a look at Ozaukee’s 55,200 in 2016. Put enough numbers in front of anyone, and some will start looking “funny”.
Finally, it’s worth pointing out that Waukesha County has had incredible turnout of registered voters. In 2020, the total votes exceeded the total registration reported by the county (excluding day-of registrations).
“So what does this all mean?”
Well, I’d say that there was nothing strange about Milwaukee turnout and voting in 2020. Registered voters voting isn’t suspicious. People registering to vote isn’t suspicious. By all of the metrics the Milwaukee City Wire (and others) are trying to cast doubt on the results, deeply red counties show the similar metrics in spades.
The truth is voter fraud is exceptionally rare. Wisconsin has required an ID from voters since 2011 (although there’s debate on their efficacy of reducing fraud). Anyone is allowed to observe the elections in Wisconsin. If you are truly concerned about fraud in your area, become an observer. In Milwaukee, 15 from each major political party make up the ~60 they have on election night. Wisconsin’s Election Commission has found only 19 incidents of possible voter fraud, irregularities, or violations between February 2019 and August 2020. The incidents occurred in Racine, Eau Claire, Milwaukee, Rock, Kenosha, Ozaukee, Wood, Brown, and Waukesha, and the violations primarily consisted of individuals trying to vote twice or providing the wrong information.
“Where the hell did that article get their information from if it’s all wrong?”
Good question! I don’t know. There’s no byline to contact the author, and I’ve emailed the website asking for their datasets but received no response. I don’t really expect to either…
Milwaukee City Wire is part of Metric Media. Metric Media is a conglomeration of hundreds of websites made to look like local news outlets. The stories are mostly from an automated process using data releases from federal programs. These websites and articles are called “pink slime journalism”. The goal of these websites is to generate sensational headlines to generate ad clicks (and possibly spread disinformation for the highest paying political groups). Most networks like Metric Media (totaling nearly 1,300 “local” websites) can be traced back to Brian Timpone, a conservative businessman.
Always check sources, look at fact checkers, and know who your news is coming from. When in doubt, look into it for yourself. Don’t spread disinformation.
