Wisconsin’s election results: Did the investigation find fraud?
Although the 2020 presidential election results were projected to be in former Vice President Joe Biden’s favor early November, motions to contest these results are still ongoing. During and after the election, President Donald Trump took to Twitter to claim a wide-spread conspiracy of Democrat voter fraud.
Spearheaded by his attorney Rudy Giuliani, Trump has taken it upon himself to open investigations into voter fraud in a number of U.S. states. Most of these claims have been thrown out or proven wrong by the states, but there are a few that are still awaiting results.
What’s going on in Wisconsin?
Trump seemed pretty certain there was some wrongdoing when it came to voting in Wisconsin. His attorneys stated that absentee ballots in which voters identified themselves as “indefinitely confined” due to the COVID-19 pandemic allowed them to cast a ballot without showing ID, and therefore vote more than once.
The Trump campaign’s legal adviser Jenna Ellis also claimed the recounts had “revealed serious issues regarding the legality of ballots cast. As we have said from the very beginning, we want every legal vote, and only legal votes to be counted, and we will continue to uphold our promise to the American people to fight for a free & fair election.”
Trump tweeted on Saturday: “The Wisconsin recount is not about finding mistakes in the count, it is about finding people who have voted illegally, and that case will be brought after the recount is over, on Monday or Tuesday. We have found many illegal votes.”
But, alas, as Monday rolled around, it became clear that Biden still beat Trump in Wisconsin by more than 20,000 votes. This shortcoming can be added to a long list of Trump’s unsuccessful attempts to contest election results.
Democratic lawyer Marc Elias took to Twitter to comment on the recount. “Trump becomes the first presidential candidate in history to lose recounts in two different states,” he wrote. “Trump and his allies remain 1-39 in post-election litigation.”
Danielle Melfi, the Wisconsin director of the Biden campaign, also commented on the investigation. She stated that canvassers had “resoundingly rejected – often on a bipartisan basis – the Trump campaign’s baseless attempts to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites who simply followed the law when they voted. And despite repeated incendiary accusations, there was no evidence of fraud whatsoever.”
How the results affect the future
Trump’s campaign stated that his administration will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, yet they have not done so presently.
Little ultimately changed after the Wisconsin recount, except Biden’s lead over Trump in the state actually grew by 87 votes. Oops!
To make events even more awkward, Wisconsin law required Trump’s campaign to pay for the recount. This requirement means he paid $3 million only to discover that his rival beat him by even more votes.
After solidifying his defeat in Wisconsin, it seems Trump is pretty much out of options when it comes to making a pathway for himself back into the White House. Four of the six states where Trump contested results have already confirmed Biden took the lead. A second recount will be taking place soon in Georgia, but officials do not expect it to change Biden’s 12,000 vote margin.
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Even if Trump were to somehow win a state after a recount, it would hardly change the election’s outcome, as Biden is projected to win with a whopping 306 electoral college votes. While it’s important to keep up-to-date with new developments in the process, it looks likely we’ll have a new prez in January.
