WISCONSIN: Elections Board Rejects Hand Recount

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports:

The Wisconsin Elections Commission set a timetable Monday for a recount of the presidential election but rejected Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s request to conduct it by hand.

Unless Stein quickly challenges the agency’s decision in court and wins,the plan would leave it to officials in each of Wisconsin’s 72 counties to decide whether to do their recounts by hand. That could mean some counties perform recounts by machine and some by hand.

Citing the results of a 2011 statewide recount, commission chairman Mark Thomsen said this presidential recount is very unlikely to change the results in the state. “If nothing else this will give us a very good audit and this will reassure Wisconsin voters that we have a fair system,” said Thomsen, a Democrat.

The commission is made up of three Democrats and three Republicans. It adopted the recount plans unanimously. Stein is seeking to pay for the recount of the election — in which she received about 31,000 votes, or 1% — to make sure that Democrat Hillary Clinton really lost Wisconsin to Republican Donald Trump by some 22,000.