The recount in Wisconsin, which cost the Trump campaign $3 million, increased President-elect Joe Biden’s lead over President Trump.
Milwaukee County officials announced the completion of the recount that resulted in a net gain of 132 votes on Friday for the former vice president out of the nearly 460,000 votes cast. Biden picked up 257 votes compared to Trump’s 125. Dane County is expected to finish its recount on Sunday.
The campaign filed a petition on Nov. 18 for a recount in two of the most populous counties in the state: Milwaukee and Dane counties. It claimed that absentee ballots were illegally altered, that many of them were issued illegally, and that government officials encouraged voter ID laws to be “circumvented.”
Milwaukee County Clerk George Christenson said, “The recount demonstrates what we already know: that elections in Milwaukee County are fair, transparent, accurate, and secure,” according to Reuters.
Biden won the election with 306 Electoral College votes compared to Trump’s 232. It appears that the former vice president won a handful of states that the president won four years ago, including Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
While Biden’s transition team is in motion and he’s already begun naming Cabinet officials, the president has refused to concede, and his campaign is seeking recounts and legal remedies in the hope of winning four more years in the White House in a number of battleground states. Trump’s team claims that there were widespread voter fraud and irregularities and that election officials committed inappropriate offenses that call the results into question, but it has not shown proof of any widespread or systematic problems.
The president’s campaign has largely been unsuccessful in its various legal maneuvers.
“The people of Wisconsin deserve to know whether their election processes worked in a legal and transparent way. 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. We will not know the true results of the election until only the legal ballots cast are counted,” Jim Troupis, counsel to the campaign, said at the time it filed for the recounts. “We will not stop fighting for transparency and integrity in our electoral process to ensure that all Americans can trust the results of a free and fair election in Wisconsin and across the country.”
The campaign is still expected to try to stop the certification of the state’s election results, but that’s expected to happen on Tuesday.
