Milwaukee replaces top election official six months before presidential vote

Milwaukee will replace its top election official with just under six months until the presidential election, the city’s mayor announced on Monday.

Mayor Cavalier Johnson appointed Paulina Gutiérrez to take over as executive director of the Milwaukee election commission, replacing Claire Woodall who had served as the director since July 2020.

The change, first reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, means there will be a new head of elections in one of the most critical cities in a key battleground state. Milwaukee is the most populous city in Wisconsin and one of the places Donald Trump targeted as part of his efforts to overturn the election.

Woodall did not immediately return a request for comment.

Gutiérrez “will lead the office at an important juncture when public scrutiny of the work of the department will be extremely high”, Johnson said in a statement. “I have confidence in her, and I will make certain the department has the resources it needs to fulfill its duties.”

It was not immediately clear why Johnson chose to replace Woodall. There were reports on Monday that it was connected to her decision to publicly criticize election employees after the office mistakenly sent the wrong ballots to voters in the spring. Ahead of the April 2 Wisconsin presidential primary, more than 200 voters in Milwaukee were mailed ballots marked for the wrong district – an error that Woodall attributed in strong terms to the staff of her office.

“I can’t express how frustrating and infuriating it is that it just seems like there was no critical thinking involved or communication,” she told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

Like many election officials, Woodall drew the intense scrutiny of election-denying activists in the wake of the 2020 presidential election and faced harassment and threats in the following months. To pre-empt doubts and conspiracy theories ahead of the 2024 election, Woodall’s office developed new protocols to ensure transparency while transmitting the tally of absentee ballots.

Related: How one Wisconsin man plagued election offices and stoked mistrust

The office has also faced internal tumult since 2020. A former official in the Milwaukee election office, Kimberly Zapata, was convicted of fraud for ordering multiple fake absentee ballots in 2022 and sentenced to a $3,000 fine and a year of probation earlier this month. It is not clear if there was any connection between the scandal and Woodall’s replacement.

The 2020 election was Woodall’s first time running a presidential election in Milwaukee, and this year’s presidential election will be a first for her replacement, Gutiérrez, who was appointed deputy director in early 2023.

“Change, especially when it is unexpected, can often be unsettling,” Gutiérrez wrote in a Sunday email that was reported by the Journal-Sentinel. “The experience of changing leadership is demanding and uncertain as we navigate uncharted waters and relearn to collaborate and communicate as an organization.”