By Benjamin Yount for Watchdog.org
The results in Wisconsin’s race for state Supreme Court won’t be certified for a week. Maybe by then voters will know if there’s going to be a recount.
Liberal Judge Lisa Neubauer’s campaign spent Wednesday talking about the possibility of counting the votes one more time after she lost to conservative Judge Brian Hagedorn.
“This race is too close to call. We are almost assuredly headed to a recount,” Neubauer campaign manager Tyler Hendricks said in a statement. “We are going to make sure every vote is counted. Wisconsinites deserve to know we have had a fair election and that every vote is counted.”
When all of Tuesday’s 1.2 million votes were counted, Hagedorn won. He ended Election Day with 605,728 votes to Neubauer’s 599,768, a 5,960 vote difference.
“At this point it looks like the lead is quite large. And that a recount would not make a whole lot of sense,” Hagedorn told reporters Wednesday. “But the lead looks like it is a lead that’s going to hold.”
Candidates who lose races that end within a one percent margin of victory can request a recount. Hagedorn’s lead is about a half-percent.
But there is a question as to whether there are nearly 6,000 missing or un-counted ballots in the state.
“Our margin of victory looks to be insurmountable,” Hagedorn added.
But Neubauer called the margin “razor thin.”
“Now, the morning after the election, this race is still too close to call,” Neubauer said in a 90 second video on her Facebook page, where she asks supporters for money. “We need to make sure that every last vote is counted. And that’s going to take some time.”
A recount would not be the first time election officials counted the ballots again in a race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The state’s 2011 race for the court also ended with a recount.
Justice David Prosser won the day after Election Day by 7,316 votes. After the recount, Prosser won by 7,006 votes.
That recount took about five weeks and cost nearly $500,000.
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Benjamin Yount reports on Illinois and Wisconsin statewide issues for Watchdog.org.
