Vote recount in Wisconsin is underway

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 Wisconsin recount marked the first time in 16 years there was a candidate-driven recount of a presidential vote. But it does not carry the same drama as the Florida presidential recount of 2000, when the outcome of the election between Al Gore and George W. Bush hung in the balance.

“This is certainly not Bush v. Gore,” said Wisconsin’s chief elections administrator, Mike Haas.

Even so, the campaigns for Trump, Clinton and Stein all had observers spread throughout the state 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.