MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin finished its recount of votes cast in this month’s presidential election on Sunday, with only miniscule changes in the results that saw Democrat Joe Biden defeat Republican Donald Trump in the battleground state.
Dane County, which includes the state capital of Madison, reported only small changes in its vote totals, mirroring the earlier results of the recount conducted in Milwaukee County. Trump gained 45 votes in Dane County, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Biden won the state by nearly 20,600 votes and his margin in Milwaukee and Dane counties was about 2-to-1.
“As we have said, the recount only served to reaffirm Joe Biden’s victory in Wisconsin,” Danielle Melfi, who led Biden’s campaign in Wisconsin, said in a statement to The Associated Press.
Trump’s next move in Wisconsin will likely be in court. Trump campaign officials didn’t immediately respond to AP requests for comment.
In Milwaukee County, Biden’s lead increased by 132 votes after county election officials recounted the more than 450,000 votes that were cast there.
Trump paid to have a recount in both counties and his attorneys appear ready for a legal challenge seeking to toss tens of thousands of ballots.
The president’s campaign will need to act quickly. The deadline to certify the vote is Tuesday. Certification is done by the Democratic chair of the Wisconsin Election Commission, which is bipartisan.
The Wisconsin Voters Alliance, a conservative group, has already filed a lawsuit against state election officials seeking to block certification of the results. It makes many of the claims Trump is expected to make.
Another suit filed over the weekend by Wisconsin resident Dean Mueller argues that ballots placed in drop boxes are illegal and must not be counted.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers’ attorneys have and asked the state Supreme Court to dismiss the suit. Evers, a Democrat, said the complaint is a “mishmash of legal distortions” that uses factual misrepresentations in an attempt to take voting rights away from millions of Wisconsin residents.
Trump’s attorneys have complained about absentee ballots where voters identified themselves as “indefinitely confined,” allowing them to cast an absentee ballot without showing a photo ID; ballots that have a certification envelope with two different ink colors, indicating a poll worker may have helped complete it; and absentee ballots that don’t have a separate written record for its request, such as in-person absentee ballots.
Election officials in the two counties have counted those ballots during the recount, but marked them as exhibits at the request of the Trump campaign.
Trump’s campaign has already failed elsewhere in court without proof of widespread fraud, which experts widely agree doesn’t exist. Trump legal challenges have failed in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania.
