On Monday, the Wisconsin Elections Commission concluded its ten-day recount of the state’s presidential election: Donald Trump widened his lead by 131 votes, officially beating Hillary Clinton 1,405,284 to 1,382,536.
The recount, paid for by Green party presidential candidate Jill Stein’s campaign, was based on the conspiracy theory that Wisconsin’s paperless voting machines were hacked in an effort to skew the election result towards Trump. Stein’s campaign spent approximately $3.5 million on the recount. Given the result, the campaign spent $26,717.56 for every Trump vote discovered by the recount.
Stein herself earned 30,980 votes in Wisconsin. Ironically, if the third-party candidate had thrown her support behind the Democratic nominee before Election Day, the results of the 2016 presidential election may have been wildly different.