MADISON, Wis.: The tedious task of recounting Wisconsin’s nearly 3 million votes for president began Thursday with scores of hastily hired temporary workers flipping through stacks of ballots as observers watched their every move.
The action in Wisconsin could soon be duplicated in Michigan and Pennsylvania, where Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein was pushing for recounts. Donald Trump narrowly beat Hillary Clinton in all three states, but recounts were not expected to flip nearly enough votes to change the outcome in any of the states.
The campaigns for Trump, Clinton and Stein all had observers spread throughout Wisconsin to watch the process. The recount will have to move quickly. The federal deadline to certify the vote to avoid having the fate of Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes decided by Congress is Dec. 13. Even if that were to happen, the votes would almost certainly go to Trump, since Republicans control both chambers of Congress.
Most counties will manually recount the ballots, although Stein lost a court challenge this week to force hand recounts everywhere. The state’s largest county, Milwaukee, was recounting the ballots by feeding them through the same machines that counted them on election night. In Dane County, where Clinton won 71 percent of the vote, the ballots were being counted by hand.
Clinton lost to Trump by about 22,000 votes in Wisconsin, or less than a percentage point.
The Wisconsin recount was estimated to cost about $3.9 million. Stein paid $973,250 for the requested recount in Michigan.
Trump on Thursday objected to a recount of Michigan’s presidential votes, at least delaying the planned Friday start of the recount there until next week.
In Pennsylvania, a hearing is scheduled for Monday on Stein’s push to secure a court-ordered statewide recount, a legal maneuver that has never been tried, according to one of the lawyers who filed it.
Meanwhile, on Thursday aides to Trump and Clinton gathered for their first meeting since Election Day.
Every four years since 1972, top presidential campaign aides have met at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics for a polite discussion of the battle they just waged.
Not so this year.
Stony-faced campaign aides heckled pollsters, jeered top media executives and traded shouted charges of racism, sexism and fear-mongering.
“Let’s be honest, don’t act as if you have some popular mandate for your message,” said Clinton’s chief strategist Joel Benenson, citing the Democrat’s more than 2 million-vote lead in the popular vote.
“Hey guys, we won,” Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s former campaign manager, shot back. She later added: “Hashtag: he’s your president. How about that?”