Wisconsin County Announces Results of Recount After Uncovering Hundreds of Ballots
Milwaukee County completed its recount of presidential ballots on Friday, finding only small changes in vote totals for one of the two Wisconsin counties recounting ballots, but President Donald Trump’s attorneys appear ready for a legal challenge seeking to toss tens of thousands of ballots.
Joe Biden’s lead increased by 132 votes after county election officials recounted over 450,000 votes.
Biden, a Democrat, won the state by nearly 20,600 votes, and his margin in Milwaukee and Dane counties was about 2 to 1.
Trump paid to have a recount in both those counties, which have large numbers of Democrat voters.
As of Friday morning, Trump had gained 68 votes over Biden in Dane County, but election officials there do not expect to finish until Sunday.
The Milwaukee County vote totals increased for both candidates after election officials found several hundred ballots earlier this week. Claire Woodall-Vogg, the chief election official for the City of Milwaukee, said the ballots were not initially counted due to “human error.”
“I promised this would be a transparent and fair process, and it was,” Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson said.
Trump’s campaign appears to be preparing a court challenge, but his window to sue is narrow.
The deadline to certify the vote is Tuesday. Certification is done by the Democratic chair of the Wisconsin Election Commission, which is bipartisan.
The Wisconsin Voters Alliance, a conservative group, has already filed a lawsuit against election officials, seeking to block certification of the results. It echoes many of the arguments Trump is expected to make.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’ attorneys filed a response to the lawsuit on Friday, calling it a “brazen attack on democracy itself,” and asked the state Supreme Court to dismiss it.
Evers, a Democrat, said the group’s lawsuit is a “mishmash of legal distortions.” He argues that failing to certify the election results would overturn other election results across the state, throwing the government into chaos.
Trump’s attorneys have targeted absentee ballots on which voters identified themselves as “indefinitely confined,” allowing them to cast an absentee ballot without showing a photo ID; ballots that have a certification envelope with two different ink colors, indicating a poll worker may have helped complete it; and absentee ballots that don’t have a separate written record for its request.
Election officials have counted those ballots during the recount, but marked them as exhibits at the request of the Trump campaign.
Trump legal challenges have failed in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
Even though Trump continues his fight against the election results, he said he is assisting Biden with the transition.
The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.
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