[ad_1]
Wisconsin election officials called on President Donald Trump’s ballot compilation observers for obstructing the recount, following his demands in Milwaukee and Dane County.
Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson said in an Associated Press report on Saturday that in some cases observers objected to nearly all ballots drawn for the count.
Christenson continued to note that the complaints delayed the recount and that many observers were breaking the rules by interrupting the vote counters with questions and objections.
He called the behavior “unacceptable”.
“It is not our job to train their observers on what they are observing,” Christenson said at a press briefing on Saturday, as reported on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “They clearly don’t know what they are doing, so they keep asking questions.
Photo by Scott Olson / Getty Images / Getty
He continued, “And we said to the Trump campaign, you have to tell your people what you are looking for here because they oppose every poll.”
Tim Posnanski, the county’s election commissioner, also claimed Trump observers were breaking the rules, according to the AP.
Posnanski told his fellow commissioners that there appeared to be two Trump representatives at tables where tabulators were counting ballots, even though county rules require that a single observer from each campaign be at each table.
The commissioner said some of Trump’s representatives were posing as independents to get around this rule. Posnanski called it “prima facie evidence of the bad faith of the Trump campaign.”
An attorney for the Trump campaign has denied claims that the observers acted in bad faith.
“I want to get to the point of calling everything … and not yelling at each other,” lawyer Joe Voiland said, according to the AP.
The Trump campaign called for recounts in Milwaukee and Dane County, Wisconsin’s two largest counties, earlier this week. The president’s campaign paid the state $ 3 million to cover the cost of the recount.
Milwaukee and Dane County are historically Democratic-leaning areas. Hillary Clinton won the counties by more than 36 points in 2016, although Trump won Wisconsin as a whole by narrow margins.
Trump has yet to concede the presidential race, although several national media have called for the election of President-elect Joe Biden on November 7.
The Trump campaign has since filed multiple lawsuits in several states after election day, claiming without evidence that widespread voter fraud contributed to Biden’s victory.
The AP called Wisconsin for Biden on November 4. The president-elect currently holds a lead of more than 20,000 votes in the state.
Milwaukee County office and Trump’s re-election campaign failed to respond Newsweek’s requests for comments in time for publication.
[ad_2]
Source link