Wisconsin has completed its statewide vote canvass and confirmed President-elect Joe Biden’s win in the state. The canvass consists of a statewide examination of election results as part of a search for any potential issues with the tallies ahead of the official certification of election results. Although canvass, audit, and recount processes have been unfolding across the U.S. in the aftermath of Election Day, no issues have emerged that are significant enough to swing any states away from the presidential candidate for which they were initially called by news networks on the basis of unofficial results. A recount in Georgia, for instance, has not uncovered any election-altering issues, and re-checks elsewhere, like the state of Arizona, have produced similar results.
Breaking on @MSNBC: All 72 of Wisconsin's counties have canvassed and certified their results.
The Trump campaign has until 5 p.m. tomorrow to request for a recount. Earlier, the Trump campaign wouldn't say whether the campaign would pony up the $7.9 mil required for a recount.
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) November 17, 2020
In Wisconsin, the statewide canvass established that Biden won the state by 20,612 votes, which is slightly smaller than the margin by which Trump won the state in 2016. In two other states that Trump flipped in 2016 and Biden won this time around, the winning margins for the president-elect were larger. According to the Cook Political Report, Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania stood at a little over 73,000 votes as of Tuesday afternoon, and in Michigan, Biden’s lead stood at about 146,000 votes as of that same point. None of these leads in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan were within the range of what could be reasonably affected by a recount. In Wisconsin, the Trump campaign had until Wednesday afternoon at 5 P.M. to file for a recount — which they’d have to pay for upfront. The Trump campaign would have to pay $7.9 million to fund this recount.
The Trump campaign now has until 5PM tomorrow to file a petition for a statewide recount (Trump and his campaign surrogates have repeatedly stated their intent to), according to the AP, as well as the $7.9 million needed to conduct it.
— Emma Kinery (@EmmaKinery) November 17, 2020
President Trump and his allies have alleged that widespread fraud plagued the recent election, but they have yet to conclusively prove this claim in any respect, and there’s no indication that they’ll be coming up with meaningful evidence for their claims anytime soon. The Department of Homeland Security has characterized the recent election as the “most secure in American history,” but the Trump team has been proceeding with some unhinged challenges anyway.
In Pennsylvania, until recently, the Trump campaign was seeking to disqualify well over 600,000 mail-in ballots, because they claimed that Republican observers had been systematically blocked from watching ballot-counting. (They’ve since dropped this request to disqualify the targeted ballots.) The claim that Republicans were systematically excluded from the process is false. Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt, a Republican, has confirmed that Republicans were not wantonly excluded from the process in Philadelphia, which has been a target of Republican complaints.
