GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — Now that the unofficial election results are in, the canvassing can begin–the process of turning those unofficial results into official ones.
“Our two canvassers are a representative from each political party, and also the remaining people participating would be myself and staff. What we do is take what we call all of the election supplies. And those are all of the documents that pretty much explain what happened during election day,” Brown County Clerk Sandy Juno said.
Canvassing is when counties across Wisconsin fact check the ballots received from their lower municipalities, like cities, towns and villages.
“For example, if you have 100 voters, you should have one hundred ballots cast on the tap,” Juno said.
County clerks trace errors back to the lower municipality.
“And we explain… What the situation is and we have them go back to their people that worked at the polls to try to give us some type of documentation as to the reason why there’s a difference,” Juno said.
Once the counties correct any issues and confirm the results, the results are certified.
That’s when unofficial results become official, before being certified again by the state by Dec. 1.
County certification is expected around Nov. 17.
Only then can a candidate formally request a recount.
Work done after the polls close prep election workers for a recount.
“Your certificate envelope, your registration form, your absentee request, those are all kept and maintained by your local election official. So in the event of a recount, if we were to have one, those are materials they have to maintain and go back to, to again double check that everything happened how it should,” Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe said.
And to make sure ballots are valid…
“Again, they have to check the registration record and make sure you’re still eligible to cast your ballot. If something changed since you’ve received it to them getting back, they wouldn’t count that ballot or send it down to be counted,” Wolfe said.
“We try to the best of our ability to make sure that from what we’re seeing, this is the final result,” Juno said.
Juno, along with hundreds of clerks across Wisconsin, will start that work next week.
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