State elections administrator Meagan Wolfe pushed back on Wednesday, against any questioning of the integrity of the voting process in Wisconsin, particularly the notion that votes were somehow “added.”
While Wolfe said she wouldn’t respond to President Trump’s false claim that changing tallies as votes were counted Tuesday night suggested they are suspect, she did comment on the process in Wisconsin.
“Elections are such a deliberate, meticulous process, where each of our local election officials in our local communities are conducting this process in a public setting. Every piece of data is publicly available. And so there’s no opportunity to add additional votes to the tally.”
“Because you have to make sure that everybody’s registered to vote. That they have a lawful absentee request on file, or they signed the poll book or showed their a photo ID. There is no opportunity to count a ballot that did not go through that incredibly meticulous process.”
Wolfe briefed the media Wednesday at about the same time the Trump campaign announced it would ask for a recount of Wisconsin’s votes.
Based on preliminary results from all 72 counties, former Vice President Joe Biden has defeated President Trump by just over 20,000 votes. That’s a margin similar to the one Trump had over Hillary Clinton in 2016, when a recount added just 131 votes to Trump’s total in the state.
“I think that it’s insulting to our local elections officials, to say that . . . yesterday’s election was anything but an incredible success, that was the result of years of preparation, and meticulously, carefully following the law,” Wolfe said.
Wolfe said, with the exception of one small township with fewer than 300 voters, the preliminary tally in Wisconsin was complete as of Wednesday morning.