Wisconsin to certify election results today as recount finishes; Update: State declares Trump winner

Wisconsin to certify election results today as recount finishes; Update: State declares Trump winner … again; Update: Trump lead increased by 162? Update: Final results

posted at 4:01 pm on December 12, 2016 by Ed Morrissey

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It’s all over but for the shouting. Jill Stein got denied recounts in Pennsylvania and Michigan but will get a complete recount in Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Election Commission alerted media that all 72 counties have finished their counts and that all of them are expected to have results reported in time for a certification at 3 pm CT today (via Steve Eggleston):

The presidential recount in Wisconsin will end a day early Monday, meeting a federal deadline but making little impact on the result.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission said in a tweet Monday that it would certify the results of the recount at 3 p.m., then take questions from the media

Jason Stein at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel also adds that it’s not going to be a dramatic reveal:

So far the recount effort has resulted in almost no change to Republican President-elect Donald Trump’s winning margin in Wisconsin, election officials have said. Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton by just over 22,000 votes out of nearly 3 million cast.

At the time of the announcement, the Wisconsin Elections Commission had just a handful of counties still finishing their tallies. As of the end of business Saturday, the last recount day for which we have data, six counties still had precincts without any reports: Clark, Dane, Milwaukee, Monroe, Portage, and Racine. Ten locales had not sent in any data, but the city of Milwaukee had reported only incomplete data for all 324 of its precincts. When that data does get posted, I’ll add an update to review those final numbers.
Before the release of any new data today, despite 70% of the state’s ballots being recounted by hand, the change rate has been 0.0551%, for a net lead change of 63 votes in Hillary Clinton’s favor. So far, the state has not released updated recount data since then, but since Trump’s lead would still have been 22,554 with only 8% of the precincts left to report their full data, it’s safe to assume that it’s not going to change much anyway. (See my earlier post on the lessons of the Wisconsin recount.)
Now that Wisconsin will certify their slate of electors, we have confirmation of the 306-232 Electoral College pledge lead for Donald Trump. A handful of faithless electors might change that count slightly when the ballots are counted on January 6th, but the outcome isn’t in doubt.
Update: Wisconsin still hasn’t published its final data, but the Associated Press reports that the state has certified Trump the winner after the recount, “showing few changes in vote totals.”
Update: According to The Hill, Trump actually added 162 votes to his Election Night lead of 22,617. Heckuva job, Steinie!
Update; Here’s the updated AP link and excerpt:

Stein only got about 1 percent of the vote in each of the states that Trump narrowly won on his way to the White House. She argued, without evidence, that voting machines in all three states were susceptible to hacking.
The numbers barely budged in Wisconsin after nearly 3 million votes were recounted. Trump picked up a net 162 votes and still won by more than 22,000 votes. The final results changed just 0.06 percent.

As I’ve noted repeatedly, these changes are minuscule and far below the scale needed to overcome the margins of victory. In this case, they went in the wrong direction anyway.
Update: The state of Wisconsin has released the final worksheet from the recount tallies. The final numbers are:

• Total votes: 2,941,034 (+1,741 from Election Night, 0.0592% change rate)
  
• Final Trump lead: 22,779 (+162 from Election Night)
  
• Trump added votes in recount: 874
  
• Clinton added votes in recount: 712
  
• Stein added votes in recount: 66
  
• Johnson added votes in recount: 74
  

It’s a darned good thing that Jill Stein paid millions of dollars to conduct this recount, eh?
http://hotair.com/archives/2016/12/12/wisconsin-to-certify-election-results-today-as-recount-finishes/