A nail-biting recount in Wisconsin's 2nd Congressional District has ended and after all is said and done, Erik Olsen will defeat Charity Barry for the Republican nomination.
The race was the closest of any partisan primary on election night earlier this month — with just 74 votes separating the two candidates when the tally was over. That's about .2% of the overall votes cast.
The narrow margins caused Barry to request a recount. In her petition for a recount, Barry said she believed "a mistake or fraud had been committed in the District."
While the recount did make up for 14 votes in Barry's favor, Dane County Clerk Scott McDonell said he believed the election was fair and the recount reaffirmed that
"We were going through each individual ballot, making sure that they were counted accurately, or not counted if they shouldn't be counted," McDonell said.
After the results were finalized Monday afternoon, Barry said she agreed and conceded the race.
"I've learned so much, made so many friends along the way, got a great passion for the politics here in the second district," Barry said. "And I'm looking forward to continuing in that realm."
Erik Olsen, who now faces Mark Pocan in the general election this fall, said he enjoyed watching the counting and sees the final result as vindication.
"I don't think anybody at this point in time, who's going to be intellectually honest, can say that with this election right now that it was anything other than very, very accurate, and very, very well done," Olsen said.
Olsen will face Mark Pocan for a seat in Congress on Tuesday, November 8.