Wisconsin Officials Say Recount Isn't Expected to Change Election Results
Green Party's Jill Stein and another third-party candidate requested recount.
— -- The Wisconsin elections commission chair said today that while the state is taking the necessary steps for an election recount, he does not expect it to change the state’s election results.
"I fully expect, given the history of how elections are conducted in Wisconsin ... that the outcome is not going to be different" than the current results, Mark Thomsen, chair of the state's elections commission, said at a news conference today.
According to the Wisconsin Elections Commission, Donald Trump won the state with 1,404,000 votes and Hillary Clinton came in second with 1,381,823 votes, making a difference of 22,177 votes between the two. Jill Stein won 31,006 votes and Rocky Roque De La Fuente won 1,514 votes. Stein and De La Fuente are the two third party candidates who filed petitions to launch the recount.
Thomsen of the state elections commission denied Stein's request for a hand recount, which means the recount will be done by machine.
But he said he's confident that the recount will be accurate.
"It’s going to give us a very good audit," Thomsen said. "It’s going to reassure Wisconsin voters that we have a really good system. We’re not counting dead people’s votes. We have a system that is fair."
Voting machines in Wisconsin are not connected to the internet, officials said, suggesting that any tampering with the machines would have had to have been done in person.
"In order to access the equipment, you’d actually have to get your hands on it," Wisconsin Elections Supervisor Ross Hein said today.
The state's county clerks are set to submit their estimates for the cost of a recount at some point today. Either Stein or Rocky De La Fuente, another third-party candidate who petitioned for a recount, will have to pay the total cost to counties in full on Tuesday, Nov. 29, for the recount to begin Thursday, Dec. 1.
The recount will be done in all 72 counties and will run continuously until its completion. The state has given itself a deadline for finishing the recount of 8 p.m. on Dec. 12, which is ahead of the federal deadline of Dec. 13 for all state recounts.
ABC News' David Wright and Lauren Pearle contributed to this story.
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