During a breakdown on when election watchers can expect to get a feel for who will win Tuesday's presidential election, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough expressed surprise and dismay that the battleground state of Wisconsin will be dragging its feet.
In particular, the municipality of Milwaukee has a local policy of waiting until the wee hours of the next morning to tabulate ballots that were collected prior to election day.
Standing at his big board, MSNBC's Steve Kornacki explained, "There is one twist in Wisconsin we might as well flag right now. The city of Milwaukee –– there aren't many in Wisconsin that do this –– it takes all of its early votes, and we are talking 100,000 ballots –– maybe more, takes all of it to a separate location, counts it at the very end of the night. This is usually 1:00, 2:00, 3:00 in the morning."
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"Oh come on! Come on. What?" Scarborough exclaimed. "Who would think of this. Steve, who would think of this? You look at what Florida does. I mean, Florida counts the early votes early and we know by 8:30, 9:00 usually who is going to win that state, except for 2000."
"Why in the world would –– I understand the Republican legislatures pushed back in Wisconsin, they pushed back in Michigan, they pushed back in Pennsylvania, but the other two states they sort of took care of that by some things they did," he continued. "Why in the world would Wisconsin wait to take the early votes from Milwaukee to another place and count them when all that does is feed into Donald Trump's lies?"
"Well, to be clear, that's not a decision by the state of Wisconsin," the polling analyst explained. "That's a municipal decision in Milwaukee."
"So why would they do that?" the Morning Joe host pressed.
"There has been pressure not to and they have resisted," Kornacki replied. "I couldn't give you the best argument for why that is. What I think they are trying to do is make clear the separation between we're reporting this is all of the early vote versus the same day vote to make the separation clear for whatever reason."
"I could tell you in Wisconsin, and this is not just coming from Republicans, there have been folks saying change that," he elaborated. "It doesn't look good to have it overnight you want to make these more efficient. The rules in Wisconsin –– it's a very decentralized state –– hundreds and hundreds of municipalities, and they have the right if they want to do, any one of those could do that, there is about three dozen in the state that do it. The biggest is Milwaukee and it has been a moment."
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