Election officials in Wisconsin announced Monday that have concluded their recount and that President-elect Donald Trump won the state by a margin that changed very little after the votes were tallied a second time.
The conclusion of the recount comes after Green Party candidate Jill Stein made a push to re-canvass the vote in Wisconsin and two other states where Trump won narrowly. Her efforts have not produced significant changes to the initial tallies and have not altered Trump’s election night victory.
In Wisconsin, officials said Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton by 22,748 votes out of about 3 million cast – an uptick of 131 over his initial advantage over Clinton.
“The biggest reason for these small differences between the unofficial results on Election Night, the counties original canvasses and the recount results is human error,” Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Michael Haas said in a statement. “Some voters do not follow the instructions and mark their ballots correctly for the machines can count them. In the tight deadlines to report the results, election officials make math mistakes, we forget things, we accidentally transpose numbers.”
Stein requested the Wisconsin recount and submitted payment for it, because the margin was not slim enough to trigger an automatic recount financed by the state. She also pursued recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania. The recount in Michigan was stopped by a federal judge. In Pennsylvania, Stein’s efforts to force a statewide recount have fallen short.
Stein finished well behind Trump and Clinton. She pushed for recounts over concerns about potential hacking and other irregularities. She presented no evidence to back up her claims.
In a statement, Stein applauded the workers and observers who took part in the Wisconsin recount. She also expressed disappointment that not all the counties underwent full hand recounts, as she had initially requested.
“This recount was never about changing the outcome; it was about validating the vote and restoring confidence in our voting system to Americans across the country who have doubts. The recount in Wisconsin raised a number of important election integrity issues that bear further assessment and serious action to ensure we have integrity and confidence in our electoral system,” Stein said.
The federal deadline to certify the vote in each state is Tuesday.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post · Sean Sullivan
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