WEC staff has been informed that the Jill Stein campaign for President of the United States is going to request a statewide recount. Attorneys for the Stein campaign have indicated that they will be filing a recount petition by the 5 pm deadline this Friday.

The Stein campaign will be required to pay for the entire estimated cost of a statewide recount before a recount will be ordered. We need your help in determining how much it will cost for you and your municipal counterparts to conduct this recount. It is recommended that you start looking at figures from the 2011 Supreme Court recount and cost projections that you or your predecessor put together for the Associated Press. One option is to look at the number of ballots that were recounted in 2011 and to extrapolate based upon the number of ballots counted in the presidential election.

There are numerous logistics to coordinate and we will continue to update you on a regular basis. We will be planning a teleconference for all county clerks to participate in and we will let you know that date early next week. For now please start to put together cost projections and respond to [email protected] once complete. To get familiarized with the recount procedures, please take a look at the recount manual. For any municipality selected to audit voting equipment, we will communicate shortly with those clerks selected to provide additional guidance on how to proceed given the likely statewide recount.

We know that this is not the type of news that you want to hear immediately before a holiday and after a very labor intensive fall election season. The Statutes permit any ballot candidate to request a recount regardless of the margin. Although we are certain that this is going to create numerous challenges and significant frustration, we thank you for your commitment to election administration in Wisconsin.