Wisconsin will undertake a recount of its presidential election votes after two requests from third-party candidates. Green Party nominee Jill Stein filed her request just before the deadline Friday afternoon, the Wisconsin Elections Commission announced. Reform Party candidate Rocky De La Fuente also filed for a recount. “We are standing up for an election system that we can trust; for voting systems that respect and encourage our vote, and make it possible for all of us to exercise our constitutional right to vote,” Stein said in a statement. “We demand voting systems that are accurate, secure and accountable to the people. This is part of a larger commitment to election reform that our campaign and the Green Party has long stood for, which includes open debates, an end to voter ID laws and voter suppression, and ranked choice voting.” The Wisconsin Elections Commission said it is working under a Dec. 13 deadline to finish the recount.
“We have assembled an internal team to direct the recount, we have been in close consultation with our county clerk partners, and have arranged for legal representation by the Wisconsin Department of Justice,” Michael Haas, the commission’s administrator, said in a statement. “We plan to hold a teleconference meeting for county clerks next week and anticipate the recount will begin late in the week after the Stein campaign has paid the recount fee, which we are still calculating.”
News of the recount is likely to cause tremors among Hillary Clinton’s team after she narrowly lost the state and its 10 electoral votes to Donald Trump. Some of her allies were hopeful that Stein would succeed in her recount push but reluctant to be affiliated with a recount effort themselves.
As Clinton’s popular vote lead has surpassed 2 million, her supporters and a group of computer science experts and lawyers have pressed her to call for recounts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
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