By Samuel Short August 13, 2026 at 4:13pm
Even liberal media outlets are in disbelief over our elections.
Tuesday evening saw the Democrats hold their primary election for Wisconsin governor, but an apparent “human error”put the results in question.
Milwaukee Election Commissioner Paulina Gutierrez said when she arrived at the courthouse in Milwaukee County, 5 out of the 9 USB drives she brought with her did not have the absentee vote results they were supposed to contain.
She was bringing in 15,000 ballots, no small number in an election that Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley won by 3,783 votes over Democratic Socialists of America candidate Francesca Hong, as CNN reported.
Election officials had to redownload the missing information and bring it back to the courthouse. There were no issues with voting machines, according to a report by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
When the results finally came in, the U.K.’s Daily Mail reported that Crowley was declared the winner by the Associated Press at 2:34 a.m., but in the meantime, NBC News chief data analyst Steve Kornacki was left dumbstruck on-air by the situation.
Footage of Kornacki learning about the USB debacle was posted to social media platform X, showing the analyst at a loss for words. Broadcasters hate dead air, but what was there to say?
Unbelievable…
Kornacki ain’t about this life. pic.twitter.com/LKY8XIE5AB— The Panic (@ThePanic16) August 13, 2026
More footage made its way to X. Kornacki, totally stupefied, decided to just end the segment. “We’re kind of, indefinitely waiting for them to get their act together here,” he told NBC News national politics reporter Ben Kamisar.
Kornacki struggled to even finish a sentence. It looked like his mind was racing with thoughts about the incompetence of the election officials.
“It really is coming down to this one giant update in Milwaukee, but man, we waited 90 minutes for them, they did this whole procession, and then they find out there’s nothing on the sticks,” he lamented.
NBC News’ Steve Kornacki tries to explain that they’re ending their live coverage of the Wisconsin Democratic primary due to an election data error.
Milwaukee County officials announced a “tabulation error” in the election data. pic.twitter.com/15OauJAx8U
— James Hirsen (@thejimjams) August 13, 2026
“The audience has been with us for four, six hours in some cases, for this moment that didn’t happen.
“I think we are gonna wrap it here, for the reasons we’re saying here … I want you to know, I hate doing this to you.” Kornacki wasn’t acting or playing up his disbelief. He was genuinely baffled by it all.
The Daily Mail would post more footage where Kornacki, almost delirious from working several hours on election coverage, could not help but laugh, asking Kamisar, “Are you serious?” when the two discovered restarting the process might take hours.
Gutierrez called it a “human error,” but for the onlookers, it’s going to make trust in our elections plummet further.
Democrats fight hard in matters of election integrity, specifically so that our elections have none.
They denounce voter ID laws; they do not want voter rolls audited; they want every strange, suspect, or outright fraudulent ballot to count.
This “whoopsie” just fuels the accusations that they are cheating.
Our elections have devolved from a genuine contest of democracy into a battle to see which underhanded tactics can win the night.
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Sam Short is an Assistant Professor of History with Motlow State Community College in Smyrna, Tennessee. He holds a BA in History from Middle Tennessee State University and an MA in History from University College London. The views expressed in his articles are his own and do not reflect the views or opinions of Motlow State Community College.
