Dan O'Donnell

Dan O'Donnell

Common Sense Central is edited by WISN's Dan O'Donnell. Dan provides unique conservative commentary and analysis of stories that the mainstream media...Full Bio

 

A Recount Can't Save Lisa Neubauer

Nearly two full days after it became clear that she had lost her bid for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Lisa Neubauer is still refusing to concede and has instead issued a memo reiterating her desire to "make sure every vote is counted."

Presumably, she will wait until after the vote canvass to decide whether or not she wants to pay for a statewide recount of all 1.2 million votes cast. She trails presumed winner Brian Hagedorn by just 5,960 votes, but a recount would be futile as even such a narrow margin of victory is virtually insurmountable.

Wisconsin's last statewide recount (of 2016 presidential election results) resulted in a swing of just 131 votes out of more than 2.8 million cast--just 2.1 percent of the votes Neubauer would need to swing.

In 2011, JoAnne Kloppenburg requested a recount after initially declaring victory following a 200-vote victory over David Prosser. Almost immediately, though, Waukesha County clerk Kathy Nickolaus announced that Brookfield's 14,000 votes were never entered and, as a result, Prosser gained a little more than 7,000 to take the lead.

The resulting recount only swung 310 votes out of nearly 1.5 million cast--just 5.2 percent of the 5,960 votes Neubauer would have to gain.

Of the 27 statewide recounts in America from 2000 to 2015, only three have resulted in a change in the outcome of an election, and all three were far closer than Wisconsin's 2019 Supreme Court race. According to FairVote, the average net vote swing was just 282--4.7 percent of the votes Neubauer would need to pick up.

The most votes ever recovered in a single statewide recount were the 1,247 Al Gore took from George W. Bush in the infamous Florida recount in 2000, but that total would be just 20.9 percent of the 5,960 Neubauer would need to win the Supreme Court race.

In other words, for Neubauer to succeed, she would need to quintuple the most votes ever flipped in a statewide recount in modern American history.

That, quite simpl isn't going to happen.


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