A Recount Done by Hand will have to move quickly to Meet December 13th Deadline

From [HERE] and [HERE] Wisconsin will officially re-count its presidential ballots as soon as this week, as Green Party candidate Jill Stein pushes for recounts in Pennsylvania and Michigan as well.

Hitting a Dec. 13 deadline could be particularly tricky if Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein is able to force the recount to be conducted by hand, Wisconsin's top election official said.

Stein and independent presidential candidate Roque "Rocky" De La Fuente separately filed recount requests late Friday, the last day they were able to do so. Stein received about 31,000 votes and De La Fuente about 1,500 out of 3 million cast.

One or both of them will have to pay for the recount because they lost by more than 0.25%. The cost could top $1 million.

Stein’s representatives insist it must be done by hand, and says the campaign is prepared to go to court if the state cannot meet the deadline. “Doing the recount by hand is the only way to ensure we have a reliable recount of the vote,” said a spokesperson for the Stein recount effort.

“We are confident the hand counting can be done by December 13,” Stein campaign manager David Cobb said in a statement provided to The Hill. “If for some reason WI needs more time to count the ballots, we are prepared litigate this question in the courts to ensure a proper and full counting of all the votes.”

Stein is also planning to ask for recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania, which have deadlines next week. She has raised $5 million for the recounts in recent days — more than she raised during her campaign leading up to the Nov. 8 election.

Republican Donald Trump edged out Democrat Hillary Clinton by some 22,000 votes in Wisconsin, becoming the first GOP presidential candidate to win the state since 1984.

Wisconsin's recount will likely begin late next week, once the state has tallied a cost estimate and received payment from Stein's campaign, said Michael Haas, administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

Recounts will be done by county boards of canvassers, which will likely have to work nights and weekends, Haas said.

Electors will meet on Dec. 19 to cast their votes for the Electoral College.

"You may potentially have the state electoral votes at stake if it doesn't get done by then," Haas told the Sentinel, referring to the Dec. 13 deadline. 

Haas noted that “Wisconsin has the most decentralized election system” in the country.

“The system has strong local control coupled with state oversight, resting on the partnership between the Wisconsin Elections Commission, the 72 county clerks, and the 1,854 municipal clerks,” he said. “State law clearly gives each county’s Board of Canvassers the primary authority to conduct the recount, and to decide which ballots should and should not be counted.” 

An election law expert at the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University echoed Haas’s concerns, telling the Sentinel that the Dec. 19 date is “a hard deadline.” 

"That is a hard deadline and if a state were to miss that deadline, it would be technically in jeopardy of not having its electoral votes counted," Edward Foley told the newspaper.