President Trump’s reelection campaign has filed for a recount to begin in two Wisconsin counties, pointing to a broad spectrum of alleged voting irregularities.
As reported by the Washington Examiner, the recount of the presidential vote will focus on Milwaukee and Dane counties. Both counties lean heavily Democratic. Sources say these could begin as early as Thursday.
“President Donald J. Trump’s re-election campaign will file a petition today for a recount in two Wisconsin counties – Milwaukee and Dane – citing illegally altered absentee ballots, illegally issued absentee ballots, and illegal advice given by government officials allowing Wisconsin’s Voter ID laws to be circumvented,” a campaign statement issued on Wednesday read. “These two counties were selected because they are the locations of the worst irregularities.”
The campaign has transferred $3 million to the Wisconsin Elections Commission to cover the estimated cost of the recounts, the campaign said. The Wisconsin Elections Commission projected the statewide recount would cost the campaign $7.9 million, but Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller denied that the limited scope was related to finances.
“We’re starting where we have the most reported cases to be investigated,” he said.
“The people of Wisconsin deserve to know whether their election processes worked in a legal and transparent way,” Wisconsin Judge Jim Troupis, who is representing the campaign, said in a statement. Sources told the Washington Examiner that Troupis would likely be the point person for the recount effort in the state.
“Regrettably, the integrity of the election results cannot be trusted without a recount in these two counties and uniform enforcement of Wisconsin absentee ballot requirements,” he added.
The Trump campaign and Republicans in Wisconsin have raised questions about several issues related to the Nov. 3 election as potential points in which a recount could have an impact. One of those is the concept of “indefinitely confined voters.”
Indefinitely confined voters are defined by state law as voters who are confined to their residence because of age, physical illness, or disability for an indefinite period. The state allows residents to self-certify as such, and doing so allows them to circumvent the state’s requirement to show a photo ID in order to request an absentee ballot.
In Dane and Milwaukee counties, Democratic strongholds and Wisconsin’s two largest counties, clerks told voters in March that the state’s coronavirus restrictions qualified as a legitimate reason to list themselves as indefinitely confined, although after outcry from the GOP, the state’s Supreme Court said that the clerk’s “advice was legally incorrect.”
A GOP official recently told the Washington Examiner that the party is concerned about the massive spike in people listing themselves as indefinitely confined. Last year, the number of such voters was about 72,000, but this year, it exploded to 243,000.
Another matter that Trump’s team and the GOP have targeted is how absentee ballot envelopes were edited by clerks across the state. The Wisconsin Elections Commission issued guidance that said clerks were allowed to correct missing addresses for absentee ballot witnesses if they can find the information. Wisconsin law states that incomplete absentee ballots can’t be counted, although it provides no direction about “curing.”
