Trump-ordered recount widens Joe Biden’s victory in Wisconsin
Biden picked up 132 net votes after the Trump campaign dished out $3 million for a partial recount in the battleground state
A recount in Wisconsin’s largest county didn’t go the way President Donald Trump‘s reelection campaign planned as President-elect Joe Biden reaped the return on investment.
After his opponent’s operation dished out $3 million for a partial recount in Milwaukee County, which concluded on Friday, Biden made a net gain of 132 votes out of the nearly 460,000 cast. Overall, Biden gained 257 votes to Trump’s 125, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. This recount order also includes Dane County, where the tally is expected to be completed Sunday.
Milwaukee county clerk George Christenson said that observers representing the Trump campaign obstructed the recount and broke the rules by constantly interrupting vote counters with questions and comments. Election officials complained that a Trump observer objected to every ballot that tabulators pulled from a bag, simply because they were folded.
At the end of the Milwaukee recount on Friday, Christenson declared it “transparent and fair.”
Read More: Trump pays $3 million for recount of 2 Wisconsin counties
“There was an examination of every ballot by election workers, 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,” Christenson said, according to the Journal.
The Dane County recount must be completed by Tuesday at the latest, in time for the state Elections Commission to certify the votes.
Read More: Georgia audit to trigger hand recount of presidential vote
On Friday, Trump’s legal team suffered yet another defeat when a federal appeals court in Philadelphia rejected the campaign’s latest effort to challenge the state’s election results. Trump’s lawyers said they would take the case to the supreme court despite the Philadelphia judges’ assessment that the “campaign’s claims have no merit.”
President-elect Biden won Wisconsin by more than 21,000 votes. Wisconsin is one of several states that Biden flipped this year that Trump previously won in 2016.
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