Listen to this article

On Wednesday, the former Vice President Joe Biden narrowly won battleground state Wisconsin. It was one of the key states President Trump won four years ago. The election officials also confirmed that all outstanding ballots had been counted, save for a few hundred in one township, and a small number of provisional ballots around the state. Trump’s campaign said it planned to call for a recount which a trailing candidate is allowed to do under state law if a race is within 1% point. Point to be noted that the statewide recounts in Wisconsin have historically changed the vote tally by only a few hundred votes. Now, Biden leads by 0.624% points out of nearly 3.3 million ballots counted. President Trump’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien claimed there were reports of irregularities in several counties.

President Trump pointed to a report about a printing error on up to 13,500 ballots that required them to be duplicated on Election Day so tabulation machines could count them. Trump carried the counties where that occurred by 10 points and 19 points. The election officials had asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to allow them to fill in the ballot misprint with a black mark so the tabulation machines could read them, but the court refused. It is noteworthy that ballots in Outagamie and Calumet counties to be duplicated by hand on Election Day. The ballots were duplicated under the supervision of poll watchers and the assistance of members of the Wisconsin National Guard and had been counted. The top election official of the state, Meagan Wolfe did not directly address the Trump campaign’s claim of irregularities.

But, Wolfe defended the state’s election system and pointed out that a recount of the 2016 presidential result showed no widespread problems and resulted in only a few hundred votes changing. She said, “I believe that would be the case if we had a recount again in our state. You would find that we have a really solid system here”. Trump supporters also filed lawsuits in 2016 looking to head off separate recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania before those efforts could get started. The state courts stopped recounts there. Democrat Hillary Clinton gained 713 votes while Trump picked up 844 in the Wisconsin recount and enhanced his lead by 131 votes. President Trump won the state with a margin of 0.77% by less than 23,000 votes.