Tabulators, mostly retirees, are being paid $25 for each half day they work, and county officials say they would bring in workers as needed to count the 51,000 ballots in time.

In Wisconsin, recounts are not terribly unusual. Another vast statewide recount happened only four years ago, for a seat on the state’s Supreme Court. The recount took more than a month.

Michael Cotter, a staff member in the county clerk’s office, stood on the sidelines on Thursday morning and recalled at least three other recounts that he had taken part in, dating from a countywide do-over for a judicial seat in the spring of 2000.

“We had punch ballots back then, so I knew all about pregnant chads and hanging chads before Bush and Gore,” he said. “They kept falling out of the ballots and they were all over the floor, like confetti.”

Election officials here seemed determined to keep the process orderly. Observers were told to stay several feet away from the tabulators, on one side of the room marked off by green tape. Donna Emelity, a tabulator, said she was volunteering out of a sense of civic duty. “Wisconsin is run very honest,” she said. “I think it will prove to people that it’s an honest election and it’ll help people have more confidence.”

Representatives of the campaigns were allowed to be closer to the process, peering over the shoulders of election officials as they tested machines and used pliers to snip open white plastic sacks of ballots.

Mary Gilding, a volunteer for the Stein campaign who was there to oversee the recount, said that she did not “have a dog in this fight,” but merely wanted to ensure that the election results were accurate.