Wisconsin Recount: Day one of Dane County recount signals start of legal battle ahead

MADISON, Wis. (CBS 58) – Day one of the recount in Dane County began with several unsuccessful challenges by the Trump campaign, but it signaled the larger strategy of President Donald Trump’s legal team to attempt to toss out tens of thousands of ballots in the state’s two most liberal counties.

The challenges from the Trump campaign aimed to toss out all early in-person absentee ballots, all ballots from indefinitely confined voters and all absentee ballots where clerks or poll workers filled out missing address information.

All three challenges were rejected by the Board of Canvassers.

“Just really inappropriate to target two counties to try to make a legal point and exclude their votes,” Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell told reporters. “If this is a legal challenge to all of that type, I suppose that can go to court. So we were not going to exclude those votes in Dane County.”

While the challenges were unsuccessful, their records are being kept as those ballots will likely be revisited when the Trump campaign advances with its litigation.

In a statement, Trump campaign lawyer Jim Troupis said, “We continue to be confident that when all of the legal ballots are counted and illegal ballots are not counted, President Trump will be proven the winner.”

But the Joe Biden campaign said the recount will reaffirm the President-elect’s victory in Wisconsin.

“No hope on changing the margin in Wisconsin,” Biden campaign senior advisor Bob Bauer said in a video conference Friday morning. “No allegations substantiated in any way to suggest that the results that have been reported so far out of those counties are not correct.”