AP: Biden wins Wisconsin as Trump campaign vows recount

Democrat Joe Biden has won Wisconsin and its electoral votes by a slim 20,000 vote margin, the Associated Press declared Wednesday afternoon after President Donald Trump’s campaign already had vowed to seek a recount.

Unofficial results tallied by The Associated Press showed Biden with 49.57% of the vote to 48.95% for Trump with 95% of the state’s expected vote counted. Wisconsin’s top elections official Meagan Wolfe said all voting jurisdictions had completed their vote counting and posted results to their websites, with the exception of a small township of 300 voters.

There are no automatic recounts under Wisconsin law, but a candidate can request one if the margin between the top two candidates is less than 1 percentage point.

In a statement released Wednesday, Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said there had been “reports of irregularities in several Wisconsin counties that raise serious doubts about the validity of the results.” The campaign offered no specifics on what such irregularities it had noticed, and Wolfe said she was not aware of any specific problems when asked about the campaign’s statement.

“Despite ridiculous public polling used as a voter suppression tactic, Wisconsin has been a razor thin race as we always knew that it would be,” Stepien said. “The president is well within the threshold to request a recount and we will immediately do so.”

In a call with reporters, Biden campaign manager Jennifer O’Malley Dillon expressed confidence in the Wisconsin results.

“We are going to win Wisconsin, recount or no recount,” she said.

Trump had held about a 100,000-vote margin in the state for much of Tuesday night and into the early morning hours Wednesday. However, the lengthy process of counting vote-by-mail ballots stretched well into Wednesday.

By the time officials in Green Bay, Milwaukee and Kenosha had finished counting the absentee ballots, Biden had secured a 20,000-vote lead thanks to the heavily Democratic vote totals.

Wolfe said that under Wisconsin law, if the margin is less than 0.25%, the state covers the cost of a recount. If it’s between 0.26% and 1%, then it’s up to the challenging campaign to cover the cost.

As the results stand now, that means the Trump campaign would have to pay for the recount, which would be conducted by each of Wisconsin’s 72 counties.