President-elect Joe Biden has been declared the winner of the presidential election in Dane County after election officials certified the results of a recount Sunday.
The final results of the recount found a 91-vote reduction for Biden and a 46-vote reduction for President Donald Trump. However, with Biden’s 181,340 lead after the recount, the slight gain for Trump was not nearly enough to flip the county.
The Trump campaign had requested the recount of Dane and Milwaukee counties’ ballots from the November election as part of the president’s baseless attempts to discredit the results of the election.
“I said this from day one, that these numbers were not going to change much at all and that’s exactly what happened,” Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell said.
In total, 130 votes were removed from the overall count due to missing signatures or addresses.
McDonell later stated that he found no evidence of voter fraud in the Nov. 3 election.
The recount wrapped up on Saturday after eight days of counting and a myriad of public health concerns associated with hosting an event with public viewing during a pandemic. Despite crowd control measures, mask-wearing and Plexiglass barriers, at least one election worker chose to exempt themselves from the process for their own safety.
“It was frustrating in the middle of a pandemic [when] the hospital rooms in Dane County are full, to create potentially more problems with the COVID crisis when you know this was going to happen,” McDonell said.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission has received the certified results of the recount from Dane County and will complete the determination of the results of the recount by Dec. 1.
Addison Lathers is the Editor in Chief of The Daily Cardinal. She has covered city and campus news and held two editor positions. Follow her on Twitter at @addisonlathers.
