AP: Milwaukee’s new election chief knows her office is under scrutiny, but she’s ready

Scott Bauer of AP reports on the Milwaukee election administrator’s preparations for the November election.

As election officials across the country boost security ahead of November’s election, the leader of one of the most intensely scrutinized offices in a presidential swing state said it’s not personal threats or worries about conflicts at the polls that keep her up at night.

It’s the little things that could loom large once voting begins, the day-to-day logistics of making sure everything runs smoothly at 180 polling sites in Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s largest city, from ensuring there are enough ballots to having a sufficient number of poll workers.

“Being a new election administrator is a big challenge,” Paulina Gutierrez said at Milwaukee’s elections center as workers prepared to meet Thursday’s deadline for mailing absentee ballots. “This is a huge operation of logistics and ensuring, ‘Have we covered everything?’”