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Bonner County’s 2020 ballot recount nearly mirrors certified results

Oct. 2, 2021 Updated Sat., Oct. 2, 2021 at 8:06 p.m.

Recount of Bonner County's 2020 ballots.  (Idaho Secretary of State's Office)
Recount of Bonner County's 2020 ballots. (Idaho Secretary of State's Office)

A hand recount of Bonner County’s 2020 ballots found eight more votes for former President Donald Trump and one more for President Joe Biden.

Bonner County’s certified results showed Trump received 5,476 votes and Biden garnered 2,055. Saturday’s recount included 5,484 votes for Trump and 2,056 for Biden, according to Bonner County Clerk Mike Rosedale.

The Idaho Secretary of State’s Office said on Twitter that the nine ballots were attributed to faintly marked ballots and human error. The margin of error was 0.116%.

Of the more than 27,000 ballots, Bonner County election officials manually inspected 7,700, the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office wrote.

Bonner County, where Trump beat Biden by more than 10,000 votes in November, is the third Idaho county to manually recount ballots. The Idaho Secretary of State’s Office already hand counted ballots in Butte and Camas counties late last month in response to My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell’s election fraud claims that have been proven false.

Lindell alleged Bonner County undercounted 2,200 votes for Trump, who collected 18,369 votes compared with Biden’s 8,310.

Butte County’s recount found no changes in the vote total for Biden and found nine fewer votes for Trump than in the canvassed ballots. The Camas County count also verified the vote total for Biden, and one fewer vote for Trump than in the certified results. Those errors, of 0.63% and 0.14%, were well short of the ballot totals Lindell claimed.

Bonner County’s hand recount was livestreamed Saturday, which allowed the public to watch the process unfold in real time.

The Idaho Secretary of State’s Office tweeted that it would provide full details of Bonner County’s recount Monday.

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