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| Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Milwaukee County’s recount of the presidential election vote tally ended 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 got 257 votes and Trump added 125. The results came in Friday night, seven days after the effort to recount the nearly 460,000 votes cast in the county began in downtown Wisconsin Center. . The final total totaled 459,723.
Before the recount, Biden had 317,270 votes in Milwaukee County versus Trump’s 134,357. The recount brought the totals to 317,527 for Biden and 134,482 for Trump.
Meanwhile, the Dane County recount was scheduled to continue over the weekend, after a Thanksgiving day off. Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell tweeted On Friday morning, the recount was about 65% done and he expected to finish on Sunday.
Counties must complete the recount by Tuesday, in time for the state election commission to certify the results before the deadline set by state law.
Trump’s campaign paid $ 3 million for the partial recount in the Nov. 3 presidential election, calling for a resumption of votes only in the state’s largest and most liberal counties, Milwaukee and Dane.
Trump lost the state by nearly 21,000 votes to Biden.
The defeat came after Trump won the swing state by an equally narrow margin in his 2016 run against Democrat Hillary Clinton.
The campaign has tried unsuccessfully to get large swathes of rejected votes in Milwaukee and Dane counties, but the vote controversy may not end when the recounts come to an end.
Political observers believe that the challenges raised by Trump’s officials during the recount process were intended to set the stage for a trial. A court challenge has the potential to further alter the vote count that the county arrived on Friday.
But since the recount began, the terrain has changed across the country, with key states of Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania certifying that their number of votes for Biden and the Trump administration are paving the way for Biden’s transition to government. White House to officially begin.
Milwaukee County Completes Recount Days Before Dec. 1 Deadline
The Milwaukee County recount ended well ahead of the December 1 deadline.
The rows of gray tables where observers sat across from election workers – separated by plexiglass barriers to guard against the spread of the coronavirus – were again empty. Likewise, the two areas have been reserved for additional observers.
Everyone who participated in the recount had their temperature taken to make sure they did not have a fever and all had to wear masks due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Over the course of the seven days, the three members of the Milwaukee County Solicitors’ Council – two Democrats and one Republican – and lawyers for each campaign argued over individual votes and broad categories of ballots. There were delays in the first two days because, according to county officials, Trump watchers issued one objection after another.
There have been tense exchanges between Chairman of the Board, Tim Posnanski, a Democrat, and Trump’s campaign lawyer, Joe Voiland, a former Ozaukee County judge, about the application of ‘a policy limiting the taking of photos by observers. At one point, Posnanski told Voiland that he remembered the peasant from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” shouting, “Help, help, I’m being suppressed.”
And, of course, there was the brief feud over the poop emoji bracelets handed out by the Wisconsin Center on Tuesday to indicate that those who entered the building were fever-free.
The recount grabbed the headlines when the city of Milwaukee found 386 missing unopened and uncounted ballots in a southern neighborhood. The Solicitors’ Office voted unanimously, 3-0, that the ballot envelopes should be opened and the ballots counted.
In the following days, the city realized that it had misplaced 65 more ballots. The executive director of the municipal election commission, Claire Woodall-Vogg, reported to council on Wednesday that the ballots were found only to signal on Friday that they were still missing.
“After I went to the council, I looked (the ballots) and my heart sank,” Woodall-Vogg told the Sentinel Journal, realizing that the ballots actually remained misplaced.
Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson said the 65 missing ballots would not be counted unless they were found on Friday before the county’s election results were certified.
There were 344,220 mail-in ballots filed in Milwaukee County for the November election, with 108,947 voters participating via in-person mail-in voting and 51,060 voters self-certified as indefinitely detained, according to data provided by county from the state’s voter registration database. Of the ballots requested, 18,408 were not returned.
During the count, election workers were instructed to set aside envelopes for absentees with a different colored ink indicating that a clerk filled out a witness address and absentee envelopes that identify electors incarcerated indefinitely . The Trump campaign had ongoing objections to those ballots, but was rejected by the board, who agreed to put the envelopes aside.
The campaign also opposed the in-person absence envelopes, which was also canceled. There were 108,947 voters who participated in the in-person vote in the county, according to county records. These were not put aside because of the volume.
In the end, the total envelopes set aside amounted to 42,234. These include Oak Creek, which set aside all of its 14,869 mail-in ballots instead of segregating those that did. fall into both categories.
But the Trump campaign argued on Friday that by not allowing the separation of additional categories of envelopes and absentee ballots, the recount process had failed to allow the campaign to know exactly how many ballots and ballots. envelopes she objected.
“This procedure has prevented us from determining the exact number of envelopes or ballots that are the subject of these objections,” lawyer Stewart Karge told the Solicitors Council. “This process has therefore denied us the possibility of establishing here the exact number of ballots or absence envelopes that are the subject of our objections. If these objections are subsequently upheld, it will be necessary to re-examine these envelopes and ballots to determine the exact number of votes that should be rejected and not counted in this recount. “
He said those categories include envelopes with missing witness signatures for in-person postal votes, absence envelopes without clerk’s initials and ballots without “required clerk’s initials.”
Contact Alison Dirr at 414-224-2383 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @AlisonDirr.
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