Milwaukee County presidential recount wraps up with Biden adding to his margin over Trump
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Milwaukee County's recount of the presidential election vote tally came to an end Friday, with Democratic President-elect Joe Biden adding 132 votes to his margin of victory over President Donald Trump in Milwaukee County.
In all, Biden gained 257 votes and Trump added 125. The results came Friday evening, seven days after the effort to recount nearly 460,000 ballots cast in the county began at the downtown Wisconsin Center. The final tally totaled 459,723.
Before the recount, Biden had 317,270 votes in Milwaukee County to Trump's 134,357. The recount boosted the totals to 317,527 for Biden and 134,482 for Trump.
Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson said after the Milwaukee County Board of Commissioners adjourned at 5:30 p.m. that the recount demonstrated that elections in the county are fair, transparent, accurate and secure.
"I promised that this would be a transparent and fair process, and it was," Christenson said. "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."
He said the county met all of the unique challenges presented in the recount, not least of which was the coronavirus pandemic.
And Christenson, a Democrat, and the three-member Board of Canvassers' lone Republican, Rick Baas, highlighted the bipartisan work during the recount.
Baas said he trusted the Trump campaign "is looking forward to its day in court" and that some things had to be corrected during the recount.
"It is important for people to understand how their government works," Baas said. "A recount is just that: a recount. Now, there's evidence that will be taken to another level and it will be reviewed there, but this body has conducted itself in a manner that is exemplary. We were not the rest of the country. We did not have yelling, screaming, shouting. We had counsel that could make an articulate argument. We've done the best we can do given the circumstances that we're under."
The Dane County recount was expected to continue into the weekend, after a day off for Thanksgiving. Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell tweeted Friday morning that the recount was about 65% done and he expected to finish Sunday.
The recounts have to be completed by Tuesday, in time for the state Elections Commission to certify the results by a deadline for that day set in state law.
Trump's campaign paid $3 million for the partial recount in the Nov. 3 presidential election, requesting a retallying of the votes only in the state's largest and most liberal counties of Milwaukee and Dane.
Trump lost the state by nearly 21,000 votes to Biden.
The defeat came after Trump won the swing state by a similarly narrow margin in his 2016 race against Democrat Hillary Clinton.
The campaign has unsuccessfully tried to get large swaths of votes thrown out in Milwaukee and Dane counties, but the controversy over the votes may not end when the recounts do.
Political observers believe the challenges Trump representatives lodged during the recount process were intended to set the stage for a lawsuit. A legal challenge has the potential to further change the vote tally the county arrived at Friday.
But since the recount began, the ground has shifted across the nation, with the key states of Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania certifying their vote tallies for Biden and the Trump administration clearing the way for Biden's transition into the White House to officially begin.
During the recount, everyone who entered the room in the Wisconsin Center had their temperatures taken to ensure they did not have a fever and all were required to wear masks because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Over the course of the seven days, the three-member Milwaukee County Board of Canvassers — two Democrats and one Republican — and attorneys for each campaign argued over individual votes and large categories of ballots. There were delays in the first couple of days as, according to county officials, Trump observers issued one objection after another.
There were tense exchanges ... (Read more)
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