Hundreds of Uncounted Ballots Discovered in Wisconsin
A recount of votes in the battleground state of Wisconsin has unearthed hundreds of uncounted and unopened absentee ballots in the battleground state.
Wisconsin is one of several key states whose results are being contested by President Donald Trump amid allegations of fraud and voting irregularities.
The discovery of 386 ballots that were not counted on Election Day will do little to help the president close his deficit in the state; Trump is about 20,600 votes behind Democrat Joe Biden there, and his campaign has paid for a recount in Milwaukee and Dane counties.
But it’s also likely the find will do little to further the narrative from Democrats that the Election Day count was accurate.
The Associated Press reported the unopened ballots were found underneath already counted ballots in Milwaukee.
The mistake was attributed to “human error.”
The AP’s Scott Bauer reported the unopened ballots were found on the fourth day of the recount.
“The city’s top elections official, Claire Woodall-Vogg, said not counting the 386 ballots on Nov. 3 was due to an error by new election inspectors,” the report said.
“The county board of canvassers voted unanimously to count the ballots as part of the recount,” Bauer reported.
Not including the unopened ballots, Trump has gained 57 votes so far in the state’s recount.
Woodall-Vogg told the AP the discovery of the unopened ballots was a silver lining for election integrity.
“If there’s one positive to come out of the recount it’s that indeed that every vote is being counted, including these 386,” she said.
Trump’s legal team has argued that tens of thousands of mail-in ballots in Milwaukee and Dane counties, the state’s most Democratic areas, should be thrown out on the basis they should never have been counted, according to the AP.
The report said the president’s attorneys have “sought to have ballots discarded where election clerks filled in missing address information on the certification envelope where the ballot is inserted; any absentee ballot where a voter declared themselves to be ‘indefinitely confined’ under the law; and any absentee ballot where there was not a written application on file.”
The AP reported the recounts in Milwaukee and Dane counties must conclude by Dec. 1.
Biden received 577,455 votes in the two urban two counties, compared with 213,157 for Trump.
Attorney Jim Troupis, who is assisting the Trump campaign with the Wisconsin recount, argued in favor of recounting the votes and also for enforcing absentee ballot laws in an interview with the AP.
“The people of Wisconsin deserve to know whether their election processes worked in a legal and transparent way,” Troupis said.
“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 said.
“We will not know the true results of the election until only the legal ballots cast are counted.”
Regardless of the recount, it appears the Wisconsin results will be headed to the courts at some point, as will the results in other states that relied heavily on mail-in ballots where many are alleged to be unverified and to have arrived after the election deadline.
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