Audit logs from Milwaukee’s absentee-ballot tabulators show no evidence that votes were altered after officials failed to properly extract results from five machines following the Aug. 11 primary, according to election technology experts who reviewed the records. The mistake delayed the reporting of results by roughly two hours but did not change the final vote count. Officials initially selected an option to export audit logs rather than the files containing the election results from five of the city’s nine tabulators. The error occurred between about 10:15 and 10:40 p.m., after which the machines were locked. Workers began restarting the affected tabulators at roughly 11:30 p.m. and extracted the correct files shortly after midnight. The logs show no ballots were scanned during the gap, no votes were deleted and no data was manipulated, experts said. “I don’t see a ‘there’ there,” said Duncan Buell, a computer science and engineering professor emeritus at the University of South Carolina who has studied election systems and voting data since 2010. Ryan Macias, an election consultant and former employee of the federal agency responsible for certifying voting equipment, said the records contained “no signs or evidence that anything was done outside the norm.” Jennifer Morrell, chief executive of The Elections Group, said her team’s review found that the logs aligned with the public explanation from Milwaukee officials. The ballot totals recorded on each machine also matched the officially reported results, she said. The records were released publicly and provided to the Wisconsin Elections Commission on Sept. 4, more than three weeks after the primary. Their release followed questions from election conspiracy theorists and a request for the logs made three days after the election. Morrell said the delay in releasing the records was not necessarily unusual because election offices do not routinely publish machine logs and may need legal approval before doing so. She said preserving the records and making them available was an important safeguard, even though the process took time. The initial error quickly fueled unsupported claims on social media that election workers had switched votes or interfered with the results. The audit records do not support those claims. Milwaukee election chief Paulina Gutierrez told the Wisconsin Elections Commission that the city will revise its procedures. Written instructions will include screenshots showing workers which on-screen options to select, and the instructions will be available to observers at the absentee-ballot facility. Extraction teams will also receive a briefing before downloading results. Workers will identify each selection aloud as they proceed so other team members can verify that the correct steps are being followed. “An error occurred during the results-download process,” Gutierrez wrote. But, she added, the election safeguards worked as intended: officials identified the discrepancy, the underlying results remained intact, the correct files were retrieved and accurate results were reported.