A closely watched Democratic primary for Wisconsin governor took an unexpected turn Tuesday night when missing absentee-vote data from Milwaukee delayed results and left NBC News analyst Steve Kornacki visibly baffled on live television.
The problem involved USB drives carrying election information from Milwaukee County. Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Paulina Gutierrez said that when she arrived at the courthouse, five of the nine drives she brought did not contain the absentee-vote results that were supposed to be there.
That was no minor batch of votes. Approximately 15,000 ballots were involved, according to reports, and the eventual statewide margin between the top two Democratic candidates was considerably smaller.
Unbelievable…
Kornacki ain’t about this life. pic.twitter.com/LKY8XIE5AB— The Panic (@ThePanic16) August 13, 2026
CNN reported that Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley ultimately defeated Francesca Hong, a candidate associated with the Democratic Socialists of America, by 3,783 votes.
Election officials attributed the missing information to human error rather than a problem with the voting machines. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, officials had to download the missing information again and transport it back to the courthouse.
While officials worked through the problem, television networks covering the primary were left waiting.
Kornacki had apparently expected a major Milwaukee update that could clarify the outcome. Instead, after roughly 90 minutes of waiting, he learned that the anticipated information wasn’t actually on several of the drives.
His reaction quickly attracted attention online.
“We’re kind of, indefinitely waiting for them to get their act together here,” Kornacki told NBC News national politics reporter Ben Kamisar.
For a television data analyst whose job revolves around numbers arriving in real time, there wasn’t much left to analyze.
“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,” Kornacki said.
He also acknowledged that viewers had spent hours waiting for the same moment.
“The audience has been with us for four, six hours in some cases, for this moment that didn’t happen,” he said.
Eventually, Kornacki decided there was little reason to continue the segment without the outstanding results.
“I think we are gonna wrap it here, for the reasons we’re saying here,” he said. “I want you to know, I hate doing this to you.”
Additional footage reported by the Daily Mail showed Kornacki reacting with laughter and asking Kamisar, “Are you serious?” after learning that restarting the process could potentially take hours.
The Associated Press eventually declared Crowley the winner at 2:34 a.m., according to the Daily Mail.
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
Nothing in the reported USB-drive problem, by itself, establishes that ballots were fraudulent or that election officials manipulated the result. Officials said the episode resulted from human error, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that there were no problems with the voting machines.
But election administration depends heavily on procedures being performed correctly, particularly when thousands of votes are involved in a race decided by only a few thousand ballots.
That makes an error involving 15,000 absentee ballots difficult to dismiss as merely an inconvenience, even when the underlying votes remain intact. Election officials not only have to count votes accurately; their procedures also need to withstand public scrutiny afterward.
The bizarre sequence was especially striking because viewers watched the confusion unfold in real time. A major television network waited for Milwaukee’s results, the drives arrived, and then officials discovered that more than half of them were missing the expected absentee data.
Gutierrez called it “human error.” That explanation distinguishes the incident from evidence of deliberate election misconduct, but it doesn’t make the mistake insignificant.
