1st LD Writethru: Recount of presidential ballots in Wisconsin counties ends, reaffirms Biden's win

WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President-elect Joe Biden's win in the U.S. state of Wisconsin was reaffirmed Sunday after two of the state's largest counties finished the recount of ballots with little change in the tally.

The Democratic former vice president's lead over incumbent President Donald Trump in the key swing state grew by 87 votes, after Trump gained 45 votes in the Dane County recount and Biden got a 132-vote net gain in the Milwaukee county recount. The statewide tally showed Biden won Wisconsin by over 20,000 votes.

The Trump campaign has, as required by state law, paid 3 million U.S. dollars for the recount, only to see his defeat more apparent.

Trump tweeted Saturday that he would file a lawsuit "Monday or Tuesday" to continue challenging the results. "The Wisconsin recount is not about finding mistakes in the count, it is about finding people who have voted illegally," he said. "We have found many illegal votes."

Wisconsin is set to certify the results on Tuesday. Wisconsin Voters Alliance, a conservative voter group, has filed a lawsuit against the Wisconsin Elections Commission, asking the state's Supreme Court to prevent the certification.

Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers' attorneys filed a response to the lawsuit on Friday, calling the group's effort a "brazen attack on democracy itself" and asked the state Supreme Court to dismiss it.

The Democratic governor said the lawsuit was a "mishmash of legal distortions" that attempted to disenfranchise millions of Wisconsin residents. He said failing to certify the election results would alter other election results across the state, throwing the government into chaos.

The president also suffered consecutive legal defeats in Pennsylvania in recent days, as the state's Supreme Court on Saturday ruled against a Republican-filed case alleging voting irregularities, after a federal appeals court denied the Trump campaign's effort to appeal its own case that was rejected by a lower court.

Trump told Fox News "Sunday Morning Futures" on Sunday that he "would like to file one nice big beautiful lawsuit" in the U.S. Supreme Court, complaining that "it's hard to get into the Supreme Court."

He said the high court needs to be "willing to make a real big decision," adding he's got "the best Supreme Court advocates, lawyers that want to argue the case if it gets there."

U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann last week rejected the Trump campaign's lawsuit accusing Pennsylvania of allowing voters to fix errors in the mail-in ballots and seeking to prevent the state from certifying the results. The judge also refused the campaign to file an amended complaint.