Wisconsin Accuses Trump Supporters of Obstructing Election Recount

The 2020 US presidential election will almost undoubtedly be the subject of infinite bar room trivia questions in the years to come.

This was a contest like no other in history, with strange and fantastic nonsense sprinkled over the ordeal with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. We have a pandemic, and a racial reckoning, and an incumbent refusing to concede. This is an incredibly unique situation for a modern, digitally-enhanced society to be in, and the American people have been more enthusiastic than normal on account of it.

Now it turns out that several of Donald Trump’s supporters in Wisconsin may have gotten a wee bit too enthusiastic as of late.

Election officials in Wisconsin’s largest county accused observers for President Donald Trump on Saturday of seeking to obstruct a recount of the presidential results, in some instances by objecting to every ballot tabulators pulled to count.

Trump requested the recount in Milwaukee and Dane counties, both heavily liberal, in hopes of undoing Democrat Joe Biden’s victory by about 20,600 votes. With no precedent for a recount reversing such a large margin, Trump’s strategy is widely seen as aimed at an eventual court challenge, part of a push in key states to undo his election loss.

A steady stream of Republican complaints in Milwaukee was putting the recount far behind schedule, county clerk George Christenson said. He said many Trump observers were breaking rules by constantly interrupting vote counters with questions and comments.

“That’s unacceptable,” he said. He said some of the Trump observers “clearly don’t know what they are doing.”

And then…

Tim Posnanski, a county election commissioner, told his fellow commissioners there appeared to be two Trump representatives at some tables where tabulators were counting ballots, violating rules that call for one observer from each campaign per table. Posnanski said some Trump representatives seemed to be posing as independents.

At one recount table, a Trump observer objected to every ballot that tabulators pulled from a bag simply because they were folded, election officials told the panel.

Posnanski called it “prima facie evidence of bad faith by the Trump campaign.” He added later: “I want to know what is going on and why there continues to be obstruction.”

Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election have been ineffective thus far, and his legal team seems to be having trouble remaining cogent as well.