In Wisconsin, ballots are counted – again

HUDSON, WIS. – In the St. Croix County government building, just across the river from Minnesota, Thursday felt a bit like Election Day.

Once again, county officials lugged in the heavy machines used to count ballots, set up a table for people to check in and prepared to brief a team of elections workers about the long day that lay ahead.

Shortly after 9 a.m., after she'd ensured that everyone and everything was in place — the ballot counters, the political-party observers, the coffee pot and doughnuts — St. Croix County Clerk Cindy Campbell welcomed the 30 or so people gathered in the county's board room.

"This is a recount for the president of the United States," she said. "It's something I thought I'd never say, but we're doing this."

Recount operations began across Wisconsin's 72 counties on Thursday, following a request from Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who is footing the bill for the nearly $3.5 million effort. It is the first statewide recount for a presidential campaign since 2004, when one was requested in Ohio by the Libertarian and Green party presidential candidates.

Over the next 12 days, officials will recount nearly 3 million ballots.

This recount, in a state where Republican Donald Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton by more than 27,000 votes — and where Stein picked up just over 1 percent of the vote — isn't expected to change the result of the election. (Stein has also asked for recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania.) Stein initiated the recount after suggesting that voting machines in the state could have been hacked, tilting the election in favor of Trump.

But the stakes of the recount had little bearing on the seriousness with which St. Croix County officials considered their operations. Poll workers and observers alike were required to check in outside the door, wear badges identifying their roles and leave nearly everything they carried, including coats and bags, outside. Pencils and pens with blue or black ink were banned to prevent any possibility of someone changing the marks on a ballot.

Campbell, the clerk, provided lengthy instructions to the approximately 20 workers leading the recount. She said all the people counting and sorting the ballots before feeding them into vote-counting machines had experience working elections. Several were city clerks.

Stein had asked that all counties be required to count the votes by hand. A Wisconsin judge denied that request this week, leaving local officials to determine how to proceed. In St. Croix County, ballots recounted Thursday morning were fed through machines.

As in other counties, St. Croix's proceedings were open to the public. Thursday morning, a handful of observers identified themselves as representing the Green, Republican and Democratic parties, while another represented the Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota, a nonpartisan election watchdog group.

Mark Halvorson, the founder and now a board member of that group, said he intended to visit three recount sites in Wisconsin on Thursday and three more on Friday, then head to northern Minnesota to observe next week's recount in the Eighth District Congressional race. Then, he said, he'll head to Michigan for the presidential recount there.

Halvorson said his group has concerns about recounts like the one in Wisconsin, where counties are not required to count the votes by hand. He said that process misses the votes cast by people who failed to fill in the entire bubble next to their candidate, or circled the bubble, or slashed a check mark through it. Hand recounts, required in just five states — including Minnesota — let ballot counters identify those issues.

"Minnesota knows how to do recounts right," he said. "We have a lot of experience. I'd love to see other states take a page from our book."

Campbell said her county's recount operation would continue through 5 p.m., resuming at 9 a.m. on Friday. That schedule would continue until the work is complete, although she said some days could stretch later into the evening if the workers were midway through counting the votes from a particular township.

"We want to finish a report before we leave for the day," she said.

Erin Golden • 612-673-4790