Wisconsin Canvass of Votes Finished

Wisconsin’s 72 counties have finished with their official count of ballots cast during the 2020 general election on November 3rd.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission has received the canvassed results of all 72 counties in Wisconsin. It now has until December 1st to certify the results of the election. After the county canvass, Biden is still leading Trump by more than 20,000 votes.

Milwaukee County finished its canvass of election results Monday. The vote tally’s only changed by the number of provisional ballots each candidate received, according to a statement from Milwaukee County Clerk George L. Christenson. These are ballots that were cast in-person on election day when an individual failed to produce an ID accepted for voting.

Former Vice President Joe Biden picked up 19 votes and President Donald Trump gained two votes.

Christensen said the county is ready for a recount. “Previous recounts have demonstrated that the election process in Wisconsin is extremely accurate. We are confident that any recount would verify the accuracy of the canvass statement submitted today,” he said.

The Trump campaign has until 5 p.m. on Wednesday, November 17th to request a recount.

On Monday, the election commission announced its estimate that a statewide recount would cost $7.9 million, which the campaign will have to pay before the deadline to trigger the recount.

The Trump campaign has not yet officially called for a recount in Wisconsin. The president and his campaign have regularly claimed that the only way he lost the election was because of voter fraud. To date, there has been no evidence offered to support these claims.

On November 4th, Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager released a statement saying “There have been reports of irregularities in several Wisconsin counties which raise serious doubts about the validity of the results.” He said the campaign would request a recount.

In Wisconsin, the margin between candidates must be less than 1% in order to call a recount. And the state will not pay for it unless the margin is less than .25%. Based upon the county canvass, the Trump campaign will be on the hook for the recount.

The $7.9 million for the recount is “significantly higher” that the cost of the recount in 2016, the election commission said. The higher expenses come from “the need for larger spaces to permit public observation and social distancing, security for those spaces, the higher number of absentee ballots, a compressed time frame over a holiday, and renting high-speed ballot scanning equipment.”

Since the election, there have been a number of lawsuits filed around the country by the Trump campaign and its allies and supporters, which have met with little success.

In Wisconsin, a lawsuit was filed last week by three men alleging voter fraud in largely democratic counties that sought to invalidate votes. Less than a week after filing, the three plaintiffs voluntarily withdrew their suit.