Doug Schneider

USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

GREEN BAY - Now that they've finished recounting roughly 3 million presidential election ballots, several clerks throughout eastern and central Wisconsin continue to worry about one aspect of the voting process.

Human error.

Some voters struggled to mark ballots correctly. Some made the correct marks, but used pens that scanning machines couldn't read. Some forgot to have a witness sign an absentee ballot. Some election workers allowed unsigned absentee ballots to be counted.

"One thing that surprised me (was) the amount of human errors that I'm still seeing with this election," Fond du Lac County Clerk Lisa Freiberg said.

Whether they might be able to improve the process, however, remains to be seen.

Clerks agreed that machines used to tally votes worked as they were supposed to. But they also said the recount helped them discover human errors that, while they did not affect the overall outcome of the state's presidential vote, might have been problematic in a local election in which fewer votes were cast.

Marinette County's vote total changed by almost 300 because some voters were given the wrong pens to mark ballots, the Wisconsin Elections Commission said.

Some voters in Marathon County marked ballots incorrectly in November, or failed to have a witness sign their absentee ballots, Clerk Nan Kottke said. And workers at some polling places, she said, allowed unsigned absentee ballots to slip through.

In Brown County, some voters failed to mark ballots correctly, Clerk Sandy Juno said, while poll workers in some communities "missed a lot of write-in votes."

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'A lot of work'

Wisconsin recounted presidential ballots in early December at the request of Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who ended up paying a little more than $2 million for the recount. Though the final numbers changed slightly, the recount affirmed that Republican Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton and 13 other hopefuls; Stein finished a distant fourth.

A number of county clerks said the unscheduled audit taught them some things that could improve elections in the future. Oversight of the recount fell to the county clerks in the state's 72 counties.

"Recounts are a lot of work, and we dread having to go through one," Winnebago County Clerk Sue Ertmer said. "But they show us where we can make improvements, and where more training is needed."

The recount also provided ideas about future improvements based on "best practices," Ertmer said — small adjustments, learned from other counties, that might simplify the process or reduce the chance that a mistake is made with a ballot. And it also provided a training opportunity for elections officials and workers.

"When municipal clerks and staff come to a recount, they always say, 'Wow, this is so valuable,' because they're seeing things that are told to them at training," Outagamie County Clerk Lori O'Bright said. "A recount is always valuable in that respect."

Some states have streamlined election practices to limit the human element in vote-counting, said Charley Jacobs, assistant professor of judicial process and American politics at St. Norbert College in De Pere.

Colorado, Oregon and Washington, he said, basically have everyone vote by mail. That ensures that poll workers don't have to handle ballots differently depending on whether a vote was cast in a polling place versus at a person's home.

But because the federal government doesn't require all states to use the same process — the choice is up to the states — problems arise. The debate over whether certain ballots should be counted in Florida during the razor-thin Bush-Gore presidential race in 2000 was an example.

'Low error rate'

"I believe the scanners used in Wisconsin have a very low error rate," Jacobs said. "On the other hand, you had 'hanging chads' in Florida. You had (elections workers) examining ballots and going, 'Does a dimpled chad count as a vote? Does a quarter-chad?'"

Requiring all states to use the same process, he said, would require amending the U.S. Constitution. And even so, "you'll never completely eliminate the human element" because mailed ballots would still be delivered by a person.

Stein's campaign paid the state $3.5 million based on estimates from Wisconsin's 72 county clerks; the campaign is due a refund of about $1.5 million. Elections Commission spokesman Reid Magney said counties overestimated because they had to quickly put together projections for something with which they had little or no experience.

One change that several Wisconsin clerks indicated they wouldn't mind: A law prohibiting candidates from forcing recounts in elections where the outcome is anything but razor-thin.

Though certain recounts might be necessary — judicial candidate JoAnne Kloppenburg requested one in 2011 after what appeared to be a 204-vote win over incumbent David Prosser became a 7,300-vote loss after Waukesha County announced that some ballots had not been counted — they say there was little need for a statewide presidential recount since Trump on election night finished more than 22,000 votes ahead of Clinton in Wisconsin.

"We've gone through two statewide recounts now and many smaller recounts. In each case, the equipment has … performed as programmed," Wood County Clerk Cindy Cepress said. "I've heard rumblings from legislators that the recount statute should be revised to not allow a recount when the outcome has no hope of changing."

dschneid@greenbaypressgazette.com and follow him on Twitter @PGDougSchneider

USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin reporters Jonathan Anderson, Madeleine Behr, Nora Hertel, Nathaniel Shuda and Madeline Zukowski contributed.