More than a third of the counties in Wisconsin have already completed their canvassing of the votes, but a recount is expected to follow at President Trump’s request.
Racine and Kenosha counties started their canvasses on Tuesday. Racine County completed its canvass in just a few hours reporting very few irregularities and no signs of voter fraud.
Counties across the state are currently double-checking that every vote is counted in a process called canvassing.
“It’s not a real exciting process, we’re not handling ballots,” said Kenosha Co. Clerk Regi Bachochin.
Bachochin said ballots aren’t required as the canvass compares the totals each county received straight from the polls to the numbers reported by each municipality.
Racine County finished its canvass of more than 100,000 votes Tuesday morning. Clerk Wendy Christensen said just seven provisional and two absentee votes were added to the previous totals.
“The ballot itself did not get removed from the envelope so they counted those two ballots by hand at their municipal board of canvass,” Christensen said.
Counties have until Nov. 17 to report their canvassing results to the state. President Trump will then have 24 hours to officially request a recount. President Trump tweeted Monday, “Wisconsin is looking very good. Needs a little time statutorily. Will happen soon!”
Racine and Kenosha county clerks are already preparing for a recount, but both share the same concern of making sure those conducting the recount are properly social distanced during the pandemic.
“We’re going to need a larger space,” Christensen said. “We’ve conducted them using this conference room and a conference room down in our county board office in the past and we’re going to need more room.”
Kenosha County’s presidential results didn’t shift whatsoever after the 2016 recount. Statewide, President Trump added 131 votes to his margin of victory four years ago.
“They tend to be minuscule numbers,” Christensen said.
Christensen believes massive errors would have to be found for President Trump to overturn Joe Biden’s 20,500 vote lead in Wisconsin.
The Kenosha and Racine county clerks say they haven’t received any guidance from the Wisconsin Elections Commission about when the 13-day recount would begin.