Completed recount in Wisconsin only widens Trump's victory

MADISON, Wis., Dec. 12 (UPI) -- The results of major recount efforts in three key battleground states have only swung the momentum in President-elect Donald Trump's favor.

Green Party candidate Jill Stein launched a massive effort for recounts in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, citing potential voting anomalies that could have changed the outcome of the presidential election.

Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by relatively slim margins in all three typically Democratic states.

Wisconsin election officials announced Monday that their recount has been completed -- and it has revealed an even greater victory for Trump in that state.

The commission said it certified the results Monday afternoon.

In the end, the recount widened Trump's lead by 131 votes. The president-elect gained a total of 837 votes and Clinton 706 votes. Trump's ultimate margin of victory was 22,308 votes, officials said.

"Completing this recount was a challenge, but the real winners are the voters," Wisconsin Elections Commission chairman Mark Thomsen said in a statement Monday. "Based on the recount, they can have confidence that Wisconsin's election results accurately reflect the will of the people, regardless of whether they are counted by hand or by machine."

Wisconsin was targeted for a recount partly due to the fact the state hadn't awarded its electoral votes to a Republican presidential candidate since 1984. Pundits and pollsters were in near universal agreement before the election that Clinton would win Wisconsin.

Monday's certification brought an end to Stein's recount campaign, after the efforts in Michigan and Pennsylvania were halted by federal courts.

"Despite citizens across [Pennsylvania] stepping up and demanding their right to verify the vote, every obstacle imaginable -- legal, bureaucratic and political -- has been thrown in their face," Stein said Monday. "Pennsylvanians' constitutional and civil rights to have their voices heard and their votes counted have been stripped from right under them."