The new count is restricted to the total number of votes cast in the election and won't recount the votes for any individual candidates. It begins at 1 p.m. today at the city's warehouse at 1028 N. Hawley Road and is open to the public.
Officials from the county and city election boards jointly described the recount as a step above the county's usual canvass of city election results, because ballot bags aren't usually opened.
The recount, they said, is a response to the Journal Sentinel's story this morning that revealed the city's reported turnout from Tuesday's election may have been inflated by tens of thousands of votes.
The newspaper's analysis found that nearly two-thirds of the city's 314 voting wards reported suspect turnout numbers, mostly through figures that used the same vote totals for every ward in a polling place where multiple wards were housed.
The discrepancy appeared only to affect the turnout numbers, which led to turnout figures for the city's Democratic and Republican primaries being thousands of voters higher than the number of votes counted in any individual race.
City Election Commission executive director Susan Edman said her office's initial look at the results indicated the errors seem to be limited to the turnout totals and won't require a new look at any race's outcome.
"We don't see a problem with that," Edman said. "The problem is with the total ballots cast."
A team of 10 workers from the city and county elections boards is conducting the recount. Neither Edman nor County Election Commission manager Janice Dunn could estimate when the count might finish.
At the county's invitation, a prosecutor from the Milwaukee County district attorney's office sat in on this morning's meeting, accompanied by a detective with the Milwaukee Police Department. Representatives of the mayor's office, the city attorney's office and the county corporation counsel also attended.