Los Angeles Times

Donald Trump slightly widened his lead over Hillary Clinton in a recount of Wisconsin’s presidential contest, leaving him more than 22,000 votes ahead in the final tally.

The results effectively ended the recount efforts of Green Party presidential hopeful Jill Stein in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, the crucial Rust Belt states Trump won by narrow margins.

Courts blocked the recounts that Stein had sought in Pennsylvania, which certified its results on Monday, and Michigan.

The Wisconsin recount that was completed Monday increased Trump’s victory margin there by 131 votes. He won 1,405,284 votes — 22,748 more than Clinton.

“The biggest reason for these small differences between the unofficial results on election night, the counties’ original canvasses and the recount results is human error,” said Michael Haas, administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

“Some voters do not follow the instructions and mark their ballots correctly (so) the machines can count them. In the tight deadlines to report the results, election officials make math mistakes, we forget things, we accidentally transpose numbers.”

Stein had argued that voting machines in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan were susceptible to hacking, but produced no evidence of wrongdoing.