Several dozen ballots that were unaccounted for by election officials in the city of Milwaukee during Wisconsin’s recount of the presidential vote tally have been found.
Claire Woodall-Vogg, the executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, confirmed that the city’s count was 65 ballots short of the more than 460,000 ballots cast in the city.
“We searched our reconstructive ballots, our blank ballots, and we could not find them there,” Woodall-Vogg said. “We went back to our warehouse and located them in the voting machine where it appears that the chief left them. We have not yet counted those ballots to ensure that they are all accounted for, but we did locate ballots in the voting machine.”
Neil Albrecht, the former executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, said he located the votes in a City of Milwaukee election warehouse voting machine.
The ballots, which would not sway state results in the presidential election, are more evidence of a topsy-turvy election season marred by accusations from the Trump campaign of widespread election fraud. Despite the number of lawsuits the campaign has filed, they have had limited success in court and have brought forth minor amounts of evidence to substantiate their claims. While several media outlets have called the race for President-elect Joe Biden, Trump has yet to concede.
The Trump campaign has attempted to have ballots thrown out in Wisconsin, including 17,000 that were collected during “Democracy in the Park,” a Madison event in which voters were given the option to fill in or return absentee ballots over the course of two weekends in September and October.
The city’s Board of Canvassers is expected to certify results in the Wisconsin election after the counting concludes on Friday. So far, election officials say Biden’s lead has shrunk by 52 votes since recounting began.
