Milwaukee County Finishes its Recount

After eight days of counting nearly 460,000 ballots by hand, Milwaukee County confirmed that President-elect Joe Biden received the most votes there in the presidential election. President Trump picked up 125 votes in the recount, but Biden picked up more—257. That put the totals at 317,527 votes for Biden and 134,482 for Trump, the Journal Sentinel reports; Biden carried Wisconsin by almost 21,000 votes. The county clerk said the system worked. "There was an examination of every ballot by election workers," George Christensona said Friday, "a meticulous recounting of every ballot that was properly cast, a transparent process that allowed the public to observe, a fair process that allows the aggrieved candidate who sought the recount an opportunity to observe and object to ballots they believe should not be counted." The aggrieved candidate was Trump, whose campaign paid $3 million to have the votes recounted in the state's two largest and most Democratic counties.

Dane County's clerk said he expected its recount to be completed Sunday. While Milwaukee County officials said no fraud was uncovered, the Trump campaign still has objections to the way absentee ballots were handled. More than 2,000 absentee ballot envelopes were separated because the witness address line was filled in with ink of a different color, for example. That's probably because poll workers wrote that line in, per WTMJ. which the state allows. The Trump campaign argued the ballots could be fraudulent, but officials counted those votes. The only Republican on the Board of Canvassers agreed that the recount was a bipartisan effort. But there were corrections, Rick Baas said, and the Trump's campaign's objections during the recount could have been made with an eye toward a lawsuit. "I trust that the Trump campaign is looking forward to its day in court," Bass said. (Trump's campaign took a loss in Pennsylvania on Friday.)