Trump Sues Wisconsin to Throw Out Votes for Biden – After a $3.5 Million Recount
A day after Wisconsin Governor, Tony Evers, certified the state’s Presidential election results in favor of President-elect Joe Biden, President Trump filed a lawsuit against Evers and the head of the state’s Elections Commission attempting to throw out votes for Biden. Trump lost the state by approximately 20,700 votes, which he and his legal team refuse to accept.
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The lawsuit targets 221,323 absentee ballots that were cast in Dane and Milwaukee counties, claiming that election officials broke the law by allowing longstanding early voting practices to continue. The lawsuit also challenges 170,140 ballots that were cast early, 28,395 ballots cast by voters who claimed to be “indefinitely confined,” 17,271 ballots collected at events called “Democracy in the Park” and 5,517 ballots where clerks filled in missing information.
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. Stay tuned!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 28, 2020
Jim Troupis, lead attorney for the Trump campaign in Wisconsin told the press that Evers’ certification was “premature.” And Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, said, “As we have said from the very beginning of this process, we want all legal votes and only legal votes to be counted,” according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinal.
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Wisconsin election officials have not found any evidence of voter fraud so far and most of Trump’s legal challenges in other states have also been thrown out or come to nothing.
It is unclear what the next step will be. Trump bypassed the usual route of taking his case to a circuit court, appealing to Wisconsin’s conservative-leaning state supreme court. They have yet to say if they will take the case.
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Trump’s lawsuit comes on the heels of a recount in the state, which Trump’s campaign demanded. The recount resulted in a net gain of 87 more votes in Biden’s favor and cost Trump $3.5 million.
The rest of the money for legal challenges and recount efforts has come from several sources. First, he can draw from the Republican National Committee [RNC] account for legal and recount expenses (the Democratic National Committee also has one). Second, the Trump campaign has taken advantage of a separate, FEC-approved recount account, which allows individual donors who donated the maximum amount to the Trump election campaign to give an additional $2,800 toward a recount effort. Third, candidates are free to use any leftover funds in their 2020 election accounts.
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If all legal challenges are resolved by December 8, the state’s results will be made official. The Electoral College will meet on December 14, and Congress will officially count and recognize all electoral votes on January 6.
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This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: Trump Sues Wisconsin to Throw Out Votes for Biden – After a $3.5 Million Recount