SHAWANO, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Instead of preparing for 12 days of Christmas, county clerks across Wisconsin have been busy prepping for potentially 13 days of recounting ballots.
Today, clerks and volunteers will start recounting the state’s presidential ballots, under an effort launched by Jill Stein. Clerks will have less than two weeks to finish the job.
In Shawano County, they’ll be using a combination of hand and machine counting to recount its votes.
Shawano County clerk Pam Schmist spoke to WLUK.
“It’s only going to be counting the votes just for the one race, so it should go generally pretty quick”
According to the state, Shawano is in the minority as one of ten counties using a combination to count the ballots.
14 counties will use machines to count ballots. 48 will count by hand, including Calumet County.
Clerk Beth Hauser says the decision was made for a couple of reasons.
“Cost was one of them and also I think it’s going to put to rest the conspiracy theory that there are problems with the machine, so if our hand count comes out the same as our machine count, I hope it puts that to rest.”
Hauser’s high-end estimate is it will take seven days to recount the county’s nearly 27,000 ballots.
Calumet County predicts the process will cost $10,368. Shawano estimates its cost will be $52,700.
Both Schmidt and Hauser believe they can keep their costs below those figures.
The Stein campaign will be refunded or charged if the recount ends up going under or over budget.
