UNDATED (WTAQ) – The long process of recounting ballots got underway Thursday across Wisconsin’s 72 counties.
In Brown County, 130,000 ballots arrived to paid tabulators at an office space on Willard Drive in Ashwaubenon. Those tasked with going over the votes from last month are prepared for 12 ten-hour days.
“It was kind of a hectic morning to start with, but that was expected,” Brown County Clerk Sandy Juno told FOX 11. “But I think they’re getting their rhythm now.”
Juno explains that they will recount all reporting units through a machine, while selecting some each day to also count by hand.
“We start with the towns, work through the villages and then to the cities,” said Juno.
If the totals end up different in some municipalities that would likely be because of absentee ballots. According to Juno, tabulators may reconsider ballots that weren’t counted for several reasons on Election Day.
Down Interstate 41 in Outagamie County, clerk Lori O’Bright is overseeing their recount at the county highway department building in Little Chute.
“There are ten municipalities that initially, even on Election Day, are hand tallied,” said O’Bright. “There are also touchscreen ballots that all must be hand counted. Right now we’re working with the City of Appleton which is optical scan ballots, and those ballots will be machine read.”
Before noon, O’Bright says workers found one absentee ballot that wasn’t counted on Election Day because of questions about signatures on its envelope – a question resolved Thursday.
“In that one case, that ballot will now get counted in the tabulation,” said O’Bright.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission says it will be posting a spreadsheet around midday which summarizes the previous day’s recount totals.
